


The Monster I Live With

by Irishgrlnextdoor



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Hate Sex, M/M, Negan Being Negan (Walking Dead), Oppression, Richonne - Freeform, Rick Grimes/Michonne Smut, Rick/ Michonne making love, Rick/Negan hate fucking, Sexual Tension, Switch Rick Grimes, Tension, contrasting sex scenes, regan - Freeform, smut in later chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-05-02 11:24:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irishgrlnextdoor/pseuds/Irishgrlnextdoor
Summary: Rick has made a deal with Jadis; deliver guns to her in two weeks and she will join his revolt against the Saviors. The already difficult deal seems impossible, however, when Negan arrives in Alexandria and informs Rick that he will be moving in with him for a whole week.*Set between S7 E11 and E12*(spoilers if you have not watched to that point yet)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Recap from the show during this time (spoilers):  
> Negan just returned Carl from the Sancuary, killed Spencer and Olivia and settled in Eugene at the sanctuary. Dwight is back from being on the outs with him by lying that Sherry was dead, being welcomed back by Negan after Carson was framed to have helped her escape.  
> Rick just made a deal with Jadis and those at the junkyard for guns, but they have not gotten to go out to find them yet. Daryl is hiding out at the kingdom after having escaped- not yet moved to hilltop to join Maggie, Sasha, and Enid.  
> I extended Jadis's deal from one week to two to squeeze this fic into canon.

**The Monster I Live With**

 

* * *

 

“Good morning, Starshine!” Negan called through the front gate of Alexandria, knocking against the chain-link and sheet siding with Lucille. “The Earth says ‘Hel-fuckin’-lo!’.

Rick’s stomach dropped to its deepest depths as he and Michonne stared at the man’s silhouette through the siding. It wasn’t collection day. They had been about to leave on a run together, hoping to find guns to support their recent talks of rebellion. Jadis had only given them two weeks to go collect if she and her people were going to join them.

Now the devil had come a knockin’ and all he could do was answer.

He couldn’t begin to ever brace himself enough against the force of nature wanting in. With a gesture towards Rosita to show he was as ready as he would ever be, she pulled open the gate.

Negan’s grin was somehow seen before any of the rest of the man as he leaned against the side-rail. Lucille balanced on his shoulder was second. “Well, just the man I wanted to see. Ready and waiting at the door for me as soon as I come home- damn if that doesn’t make a guy feel special. Just jumps my Johnson!”

It was never easy to allow the man’s crude jokes to roll off of him, but Rick at least ignored the way they tried to cling like dirt on his shirt. His pride was not worth more to him than the lives of his people when it came to Negan’s jokes.

“We were going out to scavenge,” Rick tried to point out. He hoped in saying so it would also be very apparent that it was not collection day if they were still scavenging.

Negan only smirked wider, striding in through the gate he liked to say he owned. “Don’t be ridiculous, Rick. I just got here. You can’t go running off yet. What kind of a host does that make you? What does it say about your southern hospitality? Besides, you might not have to worry about tribute at all this week if you play your cards right.”

Rick didn’t understand. Negan was here, he seemed unjustly happy- which was never a good thing for Alexandria- and he didn’t want Rick out running for him this week? “What do you want?” Rick tried to voice it like a question rather than the demand it was, but he got no pleasure in beating around the bush like Negan did. If he was here to look for Daryl he was just wasting their time; Daryl safely hidden within the Kingdom. If he was here to gloat over killing two of their people and taking Eugene just the week prior… Rick gritted his jaw hard. 

The larger man licked his lips like he was savoring the words about to leave them. “Oh, your boy didn’t tell you? We talked a bit the last time I was here- you remember, the day we learned Spencer had guts after all-

His blood ran cold at the reminder but Rick had to keep listening, taking a deep breath.

“I had to admit, your setup here truly is something else. And I mentioned maybe getting a summer home here. So I’m here to house-hunt a bit for me and maybe some of my best boys. Or girls- equal housing rights and all.”

Rick could almost feel the color draining out of his face. He looked over to Michonne to see that horror he felt reflected on her face as well; so he hadn’t just heard wrong. Rosita looked like maybe she had just died on her feet.

His own stomach turned and his knees almost gave way, pure shock perhaps the only thing keeping them from doing so because he couldn’t move.

Negan’s dark chuckle filled the silence that had befallen them all. When he clapped Rick on the shoulder it nearly did knock him off his feet. “Be a dear and get my bags will ya? I’ll be staying with you for the next few days while I hunt out my new summer home.”

As if on cue, Dwight was suddenly by Rick’s side, dropping a couple heavy duffle bags at Rick’s feet before he headed back to the trucks.

Rick got a glimpse of more bags and wanted to scream in protest, realizing that they didn’t all belong to Negan. Other saviors would be here too.

Negan was already strolling away, and though it killed Rick inside to do so, he stooped down to quickly grab the bags, refusing to look to Rosita or Michonne as he did so. He could try to stop this, but if he left the bags deliberately it would cause more trouble than they could afford, so he forced himself to strap them on, easily adding another forty pounds onto himself as he jogged the distance Negan’s long strides had already carried him.

Rick followed closely behind Negan, cold sweat on his back despite the Virginia heat. “What do you mean you’re looking for _homes_? That was never part of the deal. That-

Negan stopped so short that Rick nearly ran into him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa…” he turned around very slowly to face the shorter man, smiling like Rick had just said something very amusing but very naïve. That smile grated at Rick more than any other the man liked to pull. “Correct me if I’m at all wrong here- because I do not for a moment believe that I am- but the deal was and always has been for _half_ your shit. You got shit, you give half of it to us, yes? Well guess what Rick, you got an awful lot of fine homes here in this community. Since we can’t very well move them to my people, guess what, that means you might be looking at some new neighbors very soon. Roll out the welcome wagons, bake up some casseroles and get ready to love thy neighbor, Rick,” the man cracked off with a big maddening grin as he turned and continued his stroll down the middle of the street.

Rick jogged a bit to catch up again, not wanting to scare anyone else who was watching with this madness as he leaned in closer to hiss desperately in Negan’s ear. “We have houses but they’re not empty. There’s already multiple families living in a few of them. Some are used for community purposes. We don’t have the space for-”

Negan chuckled like that information didn’t matter at all. Maybe it didn’t to _him_. “Well then maybe it’s time for a little shufflin’. Must be some folks with itchy feet looking to move, that’s what people do after all. Hell, I should become a realtor. I got lots of different properties to help some of them move into. Could start tomorrow if necessary.”

“No!” Rick growled before he could stop himself. Just the thought of Negan taking away any more of their people when he already took Daryl-

He turned to face Rick again, and this time there was no humor on his face at all. Instead was a cold gaze that he pegged Rick with and a dark warning in his eye. Rick wasn’t allowed to speak to him with that tone.

With no other choice, Rick dropped his eyes to the ground to try to at least hide any defiance that might have been stirred into them. “Just, please- this isn’t necessary. And we don’t have the people to spare if we’re to keep meeting your demands.”

“My demands?” Negan scoffed, incredulous over the word. “My _demands_ , Rick? I don’t demand anything but that you keep to our _agreement_. Your people provide for me and live, or they don’t and they die because I can’t use them. That agreement is there as an act of mercy and forgiveness for _your_ fuck up, _Prick_. It’s a fuck-ton more than you gave me before you killed some odd fifty of my men- in their _sleep_ -, only to then kill another odd ten. Did I not cut you the fuckin’ deal of a lifetime rather than coming here and mowing down sixty of your own people? And then take _all_ your shit once everyone was dead?” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe Rick’s nerve, swinging Lucille up over his shoulder again to rest there within Rick’s direct eyesight. “You stop feelin’ grateful already?”

Rick had to swallow through the lump if indignation and outrage in his throat.

Lifetime enslavement and suffering over death, and Negan wanted to call it a hell of a deal, wanted to ignore the numbers of all those he had killed before Alexandria, the very reason that they had sought to go against him in the first place before it could spread to them as well.

Rick had a lot of regrets about how that night in the forest had gone down, and a lot of people- some of his own people- liked to point at his decision to go after the saviors in their sleep as the one that could have prevented the killings, but it wouldn’t have. Rick was sure of that, and that’s why he still could not regret that decision, even if he couldn’t admit it out loud. Every community Negan had infected before had initially met with the saviors in potential peace, and each had suffered loss. They would have been no different. Maybe it would have been different people. Maybe it would have cost them less, or more, but it would have still cost them, and Negan would still have been up 60+ men on them, giving them no chance of rising against him now.

Negan’s frown deepened at Rick’s reflective silence, glancing around them in an almost idle fashion. “Where’s that boy of yours? Maybe I should ask him if you’re not feelin’ grateful anymore since you ain’t talkin’ to me.”

The sight of his son’s arm stretched out on the ground before him to cut off filled Rick’s mind and Rick managed to break past the lump in his throat and the bile on his tongue to choke out, “I’m grateful. I- we’re all grateful. I was wrong sayin’ that.”

Negan’s smile kicked up a bit, his stare pointed on Rick before he suddenly dropped the tension with an easy shrug of his shoulders. “Shit, don’t worry about it. I can forgive that. You’re _forgiven_ , Rick. Now what do you say to me in return?”

Rick was glad he could stare at the ground and have it seem submissive rather than just a way of hiding the ire that was burning in his blue eyes. “Thank you,” he choked out.

Negan chuckled like it was delightful just to hear those words, reaching out a slow fist and chucking it playfully against Rick’s jaw. Rick had to take it, squeezing his own fists behind his back.

People were gathered on the edges of the street, looking on in concern and judgment as Rick followed Negan with his bags directly towards his own house. The few hissed pleas he got out asking the man to wait or listen to him went completely ignored. He let his irritation at Rick’s whispering be known when he waved at Aaron and Eric as they watched from their yard and declared, “Howdy neighbors!” in a loud clear voice for all to hear.

Shock washed over their faces too and Rick stopped trying to talk Negan into stopping for now.  He hoped they could at least talk more about this in the privacy of his house.

Negan marched up Rick’s own porch and let himself in the door without so much as a knock.

“Daddy’s home!” he announced to the household.

Rick closed the door so fast behind him that it nearly broke the glass in the little door window, but he didn’t want everyone on the street hearing.

Negan dropped Lucille off his shoulder, letting her swing next to him as he walked muddy boots into the house. Rick reminded himself that that wasn’t important at all given the current situation. Carl and Judith should have been upstairs, and indeed at Negan’s calling he could hear the subtle creek above their heads of his son’s shifting weight in the nursery.

There was a moment of absolute silence that followed, Carl no doubt recognizing the voice and trying to decide if he should barricade the nursery or come down to see why the devil had come into his home.

Rick hoped for the barricade, but expected eventually his boy would come down because it was what Rick would have done too.

Negan sauntered through Rick’s kitchen as Rick dropped the bags in the entryway and followed after him. “Can we please talk about this?” he pleaded, willing the man to listen to him. “We can make the tribute this week, just let me go out and get it! I will find you something- anything. Just-

“Je-sus!” Negan moaned in exasperation as he made his way to the fridge to help himself. “Nagging the second I get in the door. It’s enough to drive a man to- ah-ha, here we go!” He stood up from the fridge with two beers in hand. “I don’t know which of us needs this more,” he grinned, holding one out for Rick to take. “Who am I kidding? Definitely you.”

Rick took the beer hesitantly, but had no interest in opening it up. He watched with growing frustration as Negan balanced the lid of his own against the edge of the counter and hit the bottle to uncap it, leaving behind a good scratch in the finish. _Neanderthal_ , he thought bitterly to himself. “We have bottle openers.”

Negan scoffed at that. “Shoot, I always just called them counters. Need me to get yours for ya?”

Rick set the bottle down on the center aisle, pushing it away from Negan. “You can’t stay here.”

Negan chuckled at that. “Only one of us gets to decide who stays here and who doesn’t, Rick. You’re lucky that I allow _you_ to stay here.”

Rick needed him to listen. They couldn’t afford the Saviors breathing down their necks, watching their every move for a week. Jadis had only given him two weeks to go find guns for the Scavengers.

“I can get you anything else you want, I will find whatever you need me to- I swear. But you and your men can’t-

Lucille **_banged_** against the floor, scratching it to hell. Rick managed not to outwardly jump, though he did go quiet and felt the sweat start to form over his brow.

“Let’s straighten out a few things right now.” Negan warned in a heavy tone as he stalked over in front of Rick to tower over him, Lucille tight in his grip. “You never tell me what I can and can’t do. You forget all too quickly that you work for _me_ , Rick. You. Are. _Mine_. If I tell you I’m moving in- even into your own damn home- you carry my goddamn bags. If I tell you some of my boys are gonna be looking at houses while we’re here, you roll out the welcome mats.” He moved in even closer, those hazel eyes piercing straight through him as Rick tried to keep his back straight as a rod. He dropped his voice to nearly intimate levels as he continued, knowing Rick would hear him. “And when I tell you that we are staying for a full week, you say ‘Mi casa es sue casa, beer’s in the fridge’!”

Rick’s head spun from all this, but to try to refuse was clearly futile at this point. The desperation to not have Negan breathing down his neck like this for a full week forced Rick’s tongue to try to deliver some sort of reasoning the impossible man might listen to. Rick tried to keep the edge from his voice, hardly managing as he tried to explain rather than argue and incur any sort of punishments for his people or his home. “It’s just that there aren’t even any rooms _available_ here… and you don’t want to stay with a crying baby anyway. If you could just hold off we could move some people around, get things a little more ready for-

“Don’t you worry about that none,” Negan assured him. “You just leave it to us to find our own rooms. Speaking of, how about you show me to mine. I’ll be staying in the master bedroom here for the week.”  

Rick had to clench tight his fists. He wanted to scream, throw punches, throw an absolute fit. He wanted to wake up from this unbearable nightmare. All he could do was stand there feeling like a whipped animal with his lips pressed thin.

Negan didn’t wait for him, making his own way towards the bottom of the stairs with Lucille in one hand and his beer in the other. Just the knowledge that his children were upstairs was enough to put a hustle in Rick’s step to catch up to him, following right on the man’s heel and willing himself not to grab hold of the back of his shirt to pull him back down the stairs.

He could hear the hurried shuffle of Carl’s feet as well, moving through the nursery to stand in the doorway of it, blocking it off as his eye narrowed on Negan in heavy suspicion as they came up to the second floor. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Negan grinned wide and paused at the top of the landing as he took a drink of his beer. “You’re gonna be getting new neighbors for a bit. I came to collect on my earlier mention of picking out a vacation home here.”

“Bullshit,” Carl bit back, not buying that that was the only reason Negan would pick now to show up.

“ _Carl_ ,” Rick cut in, his voice strained between ordering and pleading with his son. “Go back in with your sister for a bit while we get things sorted.”

Carl’s eye only narrowed further on his father, resentful of still being treated like a child. Rick’s eyes narrowed right back in parental warning.

Negan flat out laughed at the tension, strolling onward into where the master suite was. Rick gave Carl a last imploring look before hurrying to catch up once more.

Negan standing in the room Rick shared with Michonne… it was a horrible violation of his last little sanctum. Rick knew the anger and bitterness was evident on his face as he crossed his arms and watched as Negan took in the pile of blankets and pillows set out on the floor. “So this is where the magic happens?” Negan scoffed.

“We’re a little short on beds,” Rick growled pointedly.

Negan only smirked back in response, gingerly setting Lucille down next to the door, propping her up against the wall. “Oh I’m very aware of that, Rick. Not to worry, my guys brought some mattresses back in one of the trucks from the Sanctuary for us. Can’t have your new house guests sleeping on the floor like animals, after all.”

Rick bristled considerably, his head giving a tight little bounce in agitation he couldn’t hide because it just fucking figured. “If you’ll excuse me for just a moment…”

Negan chuckled deeply, but gave a nod of allowance before turning back to survey more of the room.

Rick moved quickly from the bedroom because he needed just a moment of air, all but suffocated under the man’s crushing boot. Now even in his own home. He marched his way down the hall to the nursery, Carl turning fast on him like he had expected to see Negan instead. He relaxed considerably to see Rick, though the tension was still evident in his shoulders.

Judith was standing in her crib, smiling and cooing at her father in blissful ignorance around the little thumb in her mouth. Rick reached out and ran his fingertips through her light tresses because it never failed to soothe him and bring him strength, some small reminder of why they bent over backwards, and why they were now preparing to fight. He rested his other hand on Carl’s shoulder for the same comfort his son’s very presence brought him. He staggered each time to feel it growing bigger and firmer under his palm as his son grew into a man right under his radar, but then just gripped harder as if to prove to himself that it was real and happening.

He pulled Carl in close so he could drop his voice. “Pack up some bags for your sister, and then for yourself, and then go over to the church to wait with Gabriel. You’re not going to be staying in any house with a Savior.” Especially Negan. That would go for Michonne too as far as Rick was concerned. At the same time, he did not want to just leave Negan alone and unsupervised so he could just lay waste to the place. He already knew he would be staying to keep just as much of an eye on their oppressor as Negan would be keeping on him.

Carl didn’t argue, and Rick suspected it was because he wanted Judith out of the house just as much.

He had just turned to head back out into the hall when Negan’s bulk filled up the doorway, perfectly relaxed and at home as he leaned against the wood frame and fixed a big smile on Judith. “Miss me, Baby Girl? Uncle Negan is gonna be shacking up here for a few days.”

Carl left Rick to stand guard between the man and baby to grab up her diaper bag and start packing it full. The implication wasn’t lost at all on Negan, who turned hazel eyes towards Rick as if to ask ‘ _it’s gonna be that way?’_.

Rick squared his jaw in response. It absolutely was.

After a moment of silent consideration- save for the shuffling of Carl packing in a hurry- he gave a shrug of those wide-set shoulders and took another drink of his beer before turning to wander more of the house. “Don’t be strangers then,” he scoffed in parting as he moved down the hall to check out the upstairs bathroom.

Rick hustled to help Carl finish packing supplies for Judith. He could bring more to wherever they ended up staying while the Saviors were here later on, so they didn’t worry about anything but the things she would absolutely need today or tomorrow. He stilled at the sound of water running, realizing that it was the sound of Negan taking a piss and for it to be that loud he had to have left the door wide open in the hallway bathroom. Carl’s eye met Rick’s and a mutual look of annoyance passed between them before they finished up. Rick slung Judith’s baby carrier onto his son’s back and slipped Judith into it so Carl could just have her secured as he packed his own things.

Rick never heard a flush, nor a sink running, but Negan moved back out into the hall. That was enough to push Rick just a little too far, rounding out into the hall and barking out, “Wash your damn hands! There’s a baby in this house.” Lord knew she liked to put everything not nailed down in her mouth if given the chance.

Negan went still in utter surprise for a moment, stunned, and truthfully Rick could feel the sweat forming on his back, hoping that stunt hadn’t just cost him anything more. His head nearly swam with relief when Negan’s reaction was to be genuinely amused, belting out a laugh and slowly turned back towards the bathroom. “Damn, so that’s what it takes to put some bass in your voice! That daddy-tone is some serious business, Rick. No wonder you got everyone around here jumping for ya to go get me my shit.” He moved back into the bathroom, and this time Rick heard a flush followed by the sink running.

Before he could feel an ounce of satisfaction, Michonne’s voice called up the stairs to him. “Rick? Rick, they’re unpacking mattresses and moving them into some people’s homes.”

Rick leaned over the banister, Michonne’s face staring back up at him in trepidation. “Have everyone whose getting a mattress put in their home get some things together and head to the church. We can figure out alternate lodgings later.” _After we see where the shit settles._

They weren’t able to say anything more to each other just then, Michonne having to move out of the way as a couple Saviors began hauling a mattress for Negan up the stairs. Negan came back out of the bathroom, this time drying his hands off on a hand towel from washing them before tossing it to Rick to take care of. He leaned on the banister and watched like a contented fat cat swishing its tail as the mattress was taken into Rick’s room, the blankets and pillows on the floor kicked unceremoniously off to the side.

“Cheer up, Rick. You and everyone else gets to take the week off from providing for us. This is your vacation too.”

Like hell it was. The saviors moving in to watch over them all for a weak was a new fresh hell on Earth. Even overlooking that aspect of it all, which was impossible, they would still need to go out scavenging to keep _themselves_ afloat.

As Rick watched the mattress plop onto the floor, it fell heavy upon him as well that this wasn’t something he had a chance of stopping. Like everything else concerning Negan, the harder he fought against it, the harder that biker boot would stomp down upon his back. He had to pick his battles. Housing Saviors for a week would have to fall off of his ‘fight this’ radar; his focus had to be toward a final fight to hopefully end it all, and make sure this _never_ happened again to his children or anybody else in Alexandria.   

If he couldn’t fight it, however, he still needed to be clear with Negan about a few things, his voice was tight with effort to not yell at the man. “So anything we collect this week… that’s ours? The Saviors don’t take half of this week’s findings next week along with the normal tally?”

Negan smirked, triumphant at the first inch Rick gave by bargaining rather than resisting. “Scouts honor. This week is all for you and your people Rick. The weary can rest if they need to or you can double time your asses out there stocking up for all I care.”

They sorely needed both, but Rick was relieved to at least hear Negan’s agreement to not taking anything more from them than lodgings this week. However… “The stuff in people’s homes-

Negan already knew what Rick was getting at, holding a hand up in reassurance. “Tell you what Rick, have your people keep tallies of whatever my guys might be helping themselves to and in the end, whatever is outside of the realm of courteous hospitality, we can either replace or settle up on. I had everyone bring supplies enough to mostly get themselves by. This…” Negan held up the beer between them. “Falls in the realm of hospitality, just so you know. What kind of host doesn’t offer his guest at least a beer?” Negan downed the rest of it in a few gulps as his men trudged back down the stairs and out of the house. Michonne still hovered around the base warily, listening in on their negotiations with a growing scowl.

Carl appeared back in the hall, however, all packed up with Judith and ready to head out. He shot one last glance towards both men as he passed by, expression guarded and unreadable.

Rick turned back down the stairs to Michonne. “Take Carl and Judith to the church for me, please, and spread word to the others of where to go. Ask around about who doesn’t have any- any _guests_ and see if they’re willing to take in another family or two temporarily.”  The word ‘guests’ was bitter on his tongue, but it took the edge out of Negan’s eye.

Michonne kept her gaze locked with Rick’s, and he could see everything she was subtly communicating there. The uncertainty, the wariness, the fear that they wouldn’t be ready for Jadis in time given this new obstacle. He could see and return in his own stare the fear for everyone else’s safety; the fear for each other’s. There was also resolve there, however, a grim but strong resolve more than ever that they were right to rebel. This needed to all be ended. They needed to build up a resistance strong enough to take down the Saviors and end their oppression.

Seeing that much in each other, Michonne gave a nod of her head in agreement to Rick’s verbal plea and placed a gentle hand across Carl’s shoulder to assure the teen before leading him and his sister out of the house.

Carl gave one last glance up towards Negan rather than Rick before letting himself be shown out. His expression had been utterly unreadable, but unafraid. The smirk Negan returned was also vague to Rick, something like ‘Don’t you worry none’.

He hadn’t really considered before- hadn’t had the chance to- about the time Carl had spent with the man, both at the Sanctuary and Alexandria before Rick got back from his run with Aaron. Negan was a manipulator, and Rick bristled to think that maybe the man had started manipulating his way over the anger and fear that Carl should otherwise always have for the man. Carl walking around like he somehow knew the man was just posturing rather than outright threatening, looking at Negan like he was at his core just a man rather than a monster… Rick had serious disagreements if that was how Carl really thought.

As soon as Michonne and Carl were out the door he turned to Negan with a firm scowl. “I want the Saviors staying away from my kids,” Rick insisted, knowing it would go unspoken that that would mean Negan too of course. It was the one demand he was willing to start a fight over.

Something dark and offended passed over Negan’s face. But he seemed to actually consider the demand rather than dismiss it outright. Rick had half been prepared to be laughed at for trying to make any demands at all. When he finally spoke it was flippant, shrugging like he couldn’t give a fuck despite the bitterness in his eyes. “It’s a small community Rick, hard to avoid anyone, but I don’t have any business with your kids anyway. My business is with you, Rick.” Negan made the point stick out by giving Rick a clap on the shoulder that was hard rather than just firm. Rick had to grit his teeth and tell himself not to swing back. “You and your people and your lovely homes.” Negan grinned like the devil. He had Rick sitting squarely in his palm, trapped as he closed his fingers into a crushing fist around him.

Negan moved down the hall, the tension in the air sucked out suddenly like a black hole had manifested to take it away and replace it with that false jovialness Negan exuded as he clapped his hands together in front of him. “Welp, back to it! I got some unpacking to do, and it sounds like you have yourself a meeting, Rick. Just so you know, we’ll be needing four houses, myself excluded from that list since I know where I’m staying already. My guys will pick out their own but I just wanted you to be prepared for how many generous families you might be making alternate accommodations for while they’re homes are being rented out for them.”

Rick read between the lines. Four families… so besides Negan they could expect at least four other saviors watching them all for the week. It was important information that Negan had just volunteered to him. It also gave him the chance to brace himself for the outcry he would no doubt be facing at the church. Rick practically stomped past the grinning man, telling himself he wasn’t being run out of his own home- he just couldn’t stand to be in there with Negan anymore. There was a difference.

Going outside wasn’t any better, but actually harder, because now the injustice wasn’t confined just to Rick. He could see the Savior’s trucks, see the luggage being carted around, the mattresses being carried. He could see Alexandrian’s standing on the street, suddenly displaced from their own homes and looking scared and confused. Looking to him like he was supposed to make it better somehow.

He _couldn’t_. Not yet.

That failing was reflected upon him in their eyes as he walked by, instructing others towards the church with him. Each hesitation from his people to follow him was like a lash on his back.


	2. Chapter 2

The church was chaos. Emotions were high. People were angry and near panicked that they had either already lost their homes or might one day soon. Five houses today didn’t mean more houses wouldn’t be confiscated down the road. They all knew that.

 

It was easier and harder at the same time to remind them all that this was why they _had_ to fight. It was easier because people believed it, deeply and utterly. It was harder because even in the hot closed up church, they had to be careful speaking of it at all with Saviors around.

Trying to promise that they would fight when he couldn’t even say as much… it was hard. The people looked up at him like they were trying to gauge if his avoidance of the subject was out of necessity or a weakening of spirit- that was even harder to bear.

Of the families to be displaced, Rick only wished he could take them into his own house, but his own family was in the same boat as the rest of them. He tried not to feel the slap of a few guilty glances that told him ‘good, you deserve it’.

Rosita’s was the worst. 

Thankfully she had taken in two of the displaced families into her home, having the space since Eugene had been taken. Her heart was still in this, even if Rick wasn’t her favorite person of late. One of the Saviors had made it a little easier on them by taking Spencer’s home, leaving no one displaced from there. Tobin had been displaced, but was fine to take one of the offices over the storage rooms and jail for the week rather than impose on anyone. Aaron and Eric were more than willing to make room for Carl, Judith and Michonne. They offered to take Rick too, of course, but Rick had refused, letting everyone know he would voluntarily be staying in his home with Negan. This earned mixed reactions, not all readable to himself. He could clearly read, however, the concern and disapproval of this idea from Michonne more than anyone. Aaron didn’t look any more convinced himself, and assured Rick their door would remain open to him. He appreciated that, but had no intention of leaving his house to the mercy of Negan more than he had to. Even worse would be when Negan got bored and left the house, which he surely would, to stroll about and harass the other members of Alexandria. Rick couldn’t buffer if he wasn’t with the man.

They were also able to ascertain the identities of the members staying in Alexandria from those that had been displaced. Besides Negan, they would have the eyes of Arat, Gary, Gavin, and Dwight upon them.

There wasn’t much they could do to change that, but it was valuable information just the same. They would find ways to work around them, they had to. Rick had also informed everyone of Negan’s promise that they wouldn’t be collecting tribute this week. Anything they collected would be considered theirs. That being the case, he wanted the focus on food. With the Saviors keeping watch, bringing any found guns in was too risky, so Rick had to advise any found either be left or hidden for now in hopes they could obtain them later.

Some looked relieved by this news, some didn’t.

“This is horseshit,” Rosita bit out under her breath.

Rick didn’t speak against it, feeling the same way, but there was nothing to be done about it either.

She turned angry brown eyes towards Rick, but her anger wasn’t exclusively meant for just him. No one felt worse about the deaths from last week than she did. Rick knew that, they were all still grieving it. There was still a damn red smear on the street in front of Rick’s house, no rain having come along to clear it yet.

“We need food,” he could only reiterate pleadingly. “In the past any caches we’ve managed to raid had to be split… but if we can find some good ones this week, that can spare us a lot of strain and risks down the road.”

There was a collective flinch from everyone gathered when suddenly the church doors burst open and light flooded into the little crowded church.

Negan and his fellow Saviors were silhouetted in the archway, Lucille balanced on Negan’s shoulder. “A-men!” he cawed, grinning brightly, looking over the heads of everyone gathered; eyes locked on Rick. “Good as gospel, Saint Rick.”

He strutted into the now perfectly silent church, and it was almost surprising to Rick that he didn’t burst into flames as he crossed the threshold. Negan moved slowly but assuredly up the empty center isle, Lucille on his shoulder, his people lining the back to impose over them all with their arms crossed while Negan commanded the focus of everyone present as he addressed the entire crowd. “This is indeed your chance. Your chance to make things easier on yourselves… your chance to fall into line, and reap some _rewards_ for it for a change. Finally, a carrot instead of a stick. Indeed, you will want to find all the food you can- _I_ want you to find all the food you can. Dwight… Arat… shit- _everyone_ here or back at the Sanctuary- we _all_ want you to find food and medicine and rest and anything else you’ve been running thin on by working so damn hard up till now. Healthy well-fed people are happier people after all, and happier people produce a shit-ton better than the meek and starving.”

He reached the front, standing just before the podium and giving Rick a wink before turning around to face the rest of the community. Rick’s eyes locked onto Lucille, right in front of his face now that Negan had turned around. Michonne was inching closer to him to try to offer support, but there was little she could do either.

“Now listen and listen well,” Negan’s instructed, voice low yet carrying in the absolute silence, everyone straining to hear every word like their lives depended on it; because they just might. “I want us all to understand now so that there are no… unpleasantries later. In exchange for this break you are being given from our collections, you will be acting as gracious hosts to me and my people. They are here because they’ve earned carrots themselves after all, so there will be no fighting. There will be no issues whatsoever. If any complaints should arise, you will bring them to me. Just so you know though, I don’t expect there to be any. Complaints are just the sort of thing that can take a good week and turn it into a real bad fuckin’ week, and I think we’ve all had enough of those. Don’t you, Rick?”

The warning in his voice was unmistakable, juxtaposed to the smile on his face.

Rick gave a tight nod of his head like he was afraid it would break his neck to do so.

Negan’s smile lit up even more in satisfaction and he banged Lucille down against the ground hard enough to make nearly everyone jump in their seats, concluding the meeting for them all. “Alright then. Go with God!”

 

* * *

 

It had been a long day of getting everyone settled. As settled as possible anyway. Rick had taken his own bedding and moved it into Carl’s room, not about to sleep on the floor next to Negan’s mattress like his fuckin’ dog. Once the five Saviors all had their mattresses and bags placed, the others had thankfully taken their leave of Alexandria. The remaining had mostly spent the rest of the evening walking the streets, guns still in hand as if patrolling. In light of this most of the people had retreated inside wherever they lived or were staying, not wanting any confrontation outside of the mass retaliation being planned.

Rick was one of the few that had been out that evening, standing on his front porch and warily watching the patrols taking place while Negan made himself to home in Rick’s kitchen, wasting more of his rations.

Rick would have put more stock in the man’s promise to reimburse for anything they took if he wasn’t hoping to kill him in a few weeks time. If he succeeded, he could probably just take back his people’s share afterwards. If not… it wouldn’t matter.

“Come and get it!” Negan’s voice sing-songed through the open front door to beckon him in. Rick couldn’t help but bristle at the mockery of the classically domestic dinner call, his grip tightening on the wood of the banister. It was only worse that Rick could tell just from the tone that the man was grinning when he said it. He could just hear it.

He didn’t move. Gavin glanced towards him as he patrolled a few houses down the road, pausing when he noticed Rick watching him rather than answering Negan’s holler.

Rick glared openly back at the man.

“Hey!”

Negan’s voice caused him to jump as the man snapped at him from the doorway. Rick slowly turned his head to face him, as if he had decided to do so rather than being forced to give Negan his attention when it was asked for. “Yeah?” he drawled.

Negan let out a snort like he didn’t buy Rick’s indifference for a moment. “Supper’s served. Finish up on giving that come-fuck-with-me glare to Gavin so he can get back to work and then come in and eat with me. I’ll be damned if I’m waiting for you twice.”

Rick wasn’t really sure what he meant by twice, but his glare resurfaced at Negan’s order before he could turn his head away. A part of him was shocked Negan expected him to actually join him at all, though most likely he was having Rick join him so that he could claim whatever food he had taken from Rick’s pantry to be more ‘hospitality’.

Negan only chuckled in bemusement before moving back into the house.

Rick followed.

He had no idea what to expect, but the smell of good food was his first surprise. He wouldn’t have thought the man capable of more than heating up Spaghettios. The second shock was when he stepped into the dining room and saw the extent of the spread Negan had somehow managed. Potatos and green beans from The Kingdom had been cut up and seasoned and roasted, and Negan had a couple stuffed peppers already plated and waiting. Rick took a closer look cautiously like it might bite him. It appeared the man had stuffed them using beans, corn, onions and…

“You’ll have to forgive the beef substitute, but all you had in there for meat were hot dogs.” Negan chuckled as he took his seat at the head of the table. “Not my first choice, but should do in a pinch. The peppers should cover the taste enough anyway. Rice would have been nice too, but I think we took all your rice previously.”

Rick pressed his lips, mentally cursing out his own stomach as it rumbled.

Negan grinned like he had heard it. “Sit down.”

Rick slowly sank into the seat to the man’s left, waiting to watch him take a bite first. Habit.

Negan didn’t need any ushering, looking pleased as punch as he grabbed up his silverware and eagerly started cutting in. Two bites in Rick finally picked up his own fork and knife… trying not to think of how easy it would be to just drive them deep into Negan’s-

“Mmm-mph! Damn good, if I do say so myself,” Negan hummed. “The hotdogs added a bit more salt than I predicted, but still- _damn_ good. How’s yours?”

It was so casual. Overly so. Sickeningly so. Rick’s fist was tight around his knife as he slowly cut himself out a bite.

Negan’s eyes were intense on him the entire time he chewed, daring him to lie about it.

“S’good,” Rick relented, after he forced himself to swallow it down. It was, but the source caused it to hit his tongue like sand, appetite gone even if his hunger was insistent.

Negan’s grin broadened proudly and as he enthusiastically cut himself another bite. “Damn right it is.”

This behavior was all new to Rick, and he struggled to recognize the game that Negan was no doubt playing with all this. There was always a game with this man. “So were you a cook or something before all this?” Rick found himself asking as Negan tucked in.

Negan swallowed his current mouthful before turning an amused smirk towards Rick. “Is that what you think I was?”

Rick glanced between the leather jacket hanging off the back of Negan’s chair and the plate of food in front of him. “Maybe a prison cook.”

Negan’s barking laughter startled Rick nearly enough to make him jump. He hadn’t been kidding really, but Negan seemed to find it hilarious. “Shit, my cooking has got to be a shit-ton better than prison food! You can’t deny it, you already said it was good. But shit no, I wasn’t a cook. I’m just good at it. We both already know you were a cop before all this. It’s obvious from your gun and your boy’s hat.”

“What were you before all this then?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

It really didn’t. Whatever he had been didn’t change what he was now, and knowing wouldn’t change anything Rick was planning. Really, he didn’t care either. Asking had been another annoying habit. Just like keeping his knife out of his dinner guest’s sternum.

Negan cocked a brow, surprised that Rick didn’t actually want to know and was willing to drop it so easily. He didn’t provide an answer, however, and they fell into a momentary silence between them as they ate together.

He of course broke the silence before too long. “So… how was your day, Sugar?”

Rick let his fork drop on his plate in frustration and he swore Negan was fighting himself to not laugh all over again, thinking himself just so amusing saying shit like that.

“Uh-oh, must have been a doozy then,” he smirked around his next bite. “You need to talk about it at all? Get some of that stress off your chest? I’m willing to listen. That asshole boss of yours on your case again?”

Rick shoved himself out of his chair, but Negan’s voice snapped through the air, the joking gone. “Sit down.”

Rick closed his eyes tight because it was only way to hide his outrage, but he remained standing on stiff legs.

“Sit. Down.” The command was serious, and though it wasn’t shouted, it resounded in Rick’s ears like the voice of God. Slowly, he forced himself back down. It took even longer, but eventually he managed to breathe through his anger enough to crack his eyes open to stare down at his plate rather than the man that had him so vexed.

Negan let out a huff of his own before turning back to his food. “We’re not finished eating,” he grumbled, “I expect at least two more bites out of you,” he tacked on.

Rick snorted a laugh at that, catching himself even more by surprise than Negan with such a reaction. It had been just so absurd. All of this was. Just absurd. The man next to him had a gift for pulling Rick’s emotions around from one extreme to another, till Rick was damn near laughing just to keep from screaming.

Negan didn’t press any more, sensing Rick at his limit for now, though it was only the first night. Rick had no idea how he was going to make it through this week. All was quiet until Rick forced down the second of the two bites Negan had stipulated. Then, finally, the man gave a flat, “You may be excused.”

Rick didn’t need to be told twice.

 

* * *

 

 

“They looked through some other homes today. They called it house-hunting, but they’re obviously looking for contraband. Guns… Daryl… maybe signs of any plans we might be making,” Michonne whispered into Rick’s ear as he held her close on Aaron’s front porch. It looked like simple intimacy, and it was- Rick feeling like he needed to hold onto her just to stay on his feet after the long day he had had; but they weren’t just whispering sweet nothings to each other.

He had waited until long after the sun went down and Negan eventually announced that he was going to turn in for the night. Only once Negan was starting to take off his boots and coat did Rick mention that he would go check on his kids at Aaron’s. Negan had narrowed his eyes upon Rick in suspicion and mentioned that they had to already be asleep by now.

That much was true, but Rick was unbothered by it, saying he just wanted to check in with Aaron as to how they were doing anyway. Negan hadn’t detained him further, nor tried to follow along.

He had seen Arat prowling around the streets just on his way over, and so he and Michonne knew not to let their guard down and openly talk to each other. “They won’t find anything,” he assured her in a soft whisper. There was nothing here yet for them to find. “Do you want me going out on your run with you tomorrow?”

“No,” Michonne insisted. “I’ll be fine. Rosita’s taking a few out looking too. Aaron is going to follow up a lead about vending machines in a factory about an hour away from here. We’ll bring back all the food we can. I’m hoping to bring back another deer.”

Rick let out a frustrated sigh against her cheek. “I owe you a deer someday,” he promised her. “Next week, we’ll go out far. You and I… we’ll go out for a few days and try to find weapons, and maybe I’ll even find you a deer. We _will_ be ready for Jadis’s agreement.”

Michonne nodded her head resolutely against him. “I think I’d like another sniper rifle over a deer right about now.”

Rick smirked in agreement. “We’ll try to get you both.”

“Carl asked to go out with me tomorrow-

“No,” Rick denied, not wanting to have that worry on top of everything else right now.

“I already told him the same thing,” Michonne assured him, “Just thought you should be aware. He keeps asking to go out.”

Rick let the tension that had stiffened them drop from his shoulders a bit. He could count on Michonne. “Maybe _I_ should go with you though-

“You’re needed here more,” Michonne reminded him with another steady shake of her head.

It was the truth. Rick couldn’t risk leaving his people to the direct mercy of the Saviors. He had followed Negan around all day trying to buffer his boredom just enough to keep him from instigating direct contact with the Alexandrians. Each day that was only going to get harder to do. Rick could already feel the man getting antsy having just his company.

That was why he didn’t want to be here, however, he honestly wanted to run from the man and all his Saviors. He wanted to go find a way to stop him, not stay here distracting him. Rick was himself growing more and more desperate for an escape from ‘Saint Rick’ who shouldered the brunt of every problem everyone had. “Next week then… just you and me. We’ll go out far. Promise.”

Michonne chuckled softly and pressed a kiss against his scruffy neck. “Sounds like a vacation, the way you’re talking.”

Maybe for him… it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter, next one longer.  
> Day one down. Six more to go, and they only get harder from here on out.  
> Please leave kudos and comment what you think so far or guesses as to what might come next.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negan continues scouting houses while sharing sage advice with Rick. Strange and unnerving revelations are made about how Negan sees him.

No matter how unbearable Rick had thought Negan to be in small doses, it didn’t compare to having him always around. He knew a lot of it Negan was doing on purpose too to agitate him, which only made it even more infuriating when he would find trash left out on counters or wet towels just dropped in the hallway after the man finished taking a shower. _Towels_. Plural. Two towels for one man for one shower.

Rick could growl and grumble through it at least, tolerating the bad manners better than some of the shit Negan would _say_ to him.

The next day while many of Rick’s people had gone out on runs Negan and the Saviors had prowled through the streets. Rick kept close to Negan in case anything happened and in exchange for his trouble Negan went on and on with unsolicited advice about how Rick _should_ be running things.

Rick tried to let it all run off him like water off a duck’s back. It wasn’t easy, but it worked for the most part. Negan lived to try to get a reaction out of people, fuel to his fire. Rick’s immovable silence ebbed the fires down to a frustrated smolder after about 20 minutes.

He would have loved to leave Negan be, but Rick had had to go with him, trailing along while Negan scoped out the area. He had to make sure that not only the people of Alexandria were safe, but -to his chagrin- Negan as well. The man walked around with not a single weapon on him since he had left Lucille in the house, yet there was probably no one more protected in that moment than he. If anything happened to him right then- be it by Rick’s own hand or even a random walker bite… it would be an all-out dogfight with the saviors coming at them all in full retribution for it.

Negan had been talking almost nonstop, sometimes rhetorically to himself, sometimes to Rick but without much interest in any answer or reply. Naturally Rick had tuned him out, so it caught him off guard when Negan was suddenly snapping his fingers in front of his face. “Ground control to Major Rick!”

“What?” Rick grunted, just wishing the man would shut up and go back to the house to hole up for the week.

“You ought to pay attention, Ricky-boy. You might learn something,” Negan scolded him lightly with a scoff. “I asked what you all do for fun around here? Do any of you even remember what fun is? Maybe it’s just me but somehow I don’t think the party ends just when I show up around here. Never seen such a miserable bunch- you gotta give them something to work towards, Rick! Something besides just survival. Fuckin’ depressin’ around here. Gotta have some sort of rewards system in play. I can’t tell you the shitstorm I would have on my hands if my people didn’t feel it was worth it to go through the shit they do. Another thing I wanted to ask you about, why are _you_ going out on the runs, Rick? Trying to lead by example or something? Don’t think I don’t appreciate your efforts to get me my shit- I most certainly do- but last week was sort of a fuck-fest having to wait around here for the one man I wanted to talk to to show up. It gave other assholes a chance to open up just a little too much and shit all over the place. There’s still a smear of that asshole in front of your house in fact- don’t think I haven’t noticed it.”

Rick glared at the back of Negan’s head for just a moment before dropping his gaze once more. “Everyone gets a fair share,” he muttered off, dodging around the more obvious landmines of conversation Negan had also laid out for him.

Negan chuckled like Rick had just said something cute, stopping his walk through someone’s backyard to pause under the shade of an old oak tree. “See, that’s a terrible system. You give as much to people that risk their necks as you do to those that don’t and pretty soon no one’s willing to risk anything. Not even mentioning how much harder you’re making everything for yourself, _Saint Rick_. You bust your ass picking up the slack from the system you’ve created _and_ you lead; talk about burning yourself out. What’s the point of leading if you don’t give yourself any perks for doing the fucking job?”

Negan inched closer to him, staring him down without his signature grin now as he invaded Rick’s space once more. This close it was harder for Rick to ignore the size of the larger man, or the green flecks of color in his eyes. He was actually serious when he next spoke. “Because _I know,_ it is a fuckin’ thankless job. Rewards would go a long way around here for your people and for yourself.”

Rick kept his back straight and, try as he might to keep his face neutral, the deep scowl couldn’t help but show through. “Yeah… Carl told me some of how _you_ run things. You give people rewards and false power for bullying the weak and scared. You don’t build anyone up, you just reward the ones that stomp down others till they are all part of the mud around your feet.” He bit down on his tongue, wanting to say so much more, but he knew he had already said far too much. One day he would get his chance to tell Negan exactly how he felt about the man’s… reward system.

Negan didn’t look angry about Rick’s words- yet. He was still looking down at Rick like he was just too damn naïve to get it. “I really would have hoped you’d be smarter than this after what happened last week with that arrogant silver-spoon sucker. People are not fair, Rick. They are not kind and caring and just because a man is weak and powerless it does not mean that that man is a good man. If those that are weak right now had the power they would turn around and do the same damn thing to anyone else. Take your own for example- Spencer was weak. Spencer knew that, and so he came looking for power from me. If he had had the power for it… you would have been the _blood_ around his feet. He wasn’t getting properly stomped into the mud- to use your own example- and so he tried to climb up out of it to put a knife in your back. I’ll bet he’s not the only one here that’s ever wanted to do that either, Rick. Or at least thought about it in passing. Hell yes- I reward those that help keep everyone in fuckin’ line. Because all those weak men-women-children-elderly -all those people you feel I oppress… if I offered any one of them Lucille and told them there would be no consequences and they could have it all- you can bet that there isn’t one of them that wouldn’t take the chance and bash my head in to have it. You go on building all your people up while tearing yourself down and you’re just giving all of them the fuckin’ chance.”

Negan didn’t allow for further reply, turning sharply and strolling onwards. Rick grit his jaw and followed along. Negan was wrong. Maybe _his_ people would all do that if they had the chance, but Rick still had those that he knew would never turn on him like that. Michonne, Daryl, Maggie, Carol… he had a family here. He had built a family. The whole of Alexandria had become part of that. Negan just had soldiers and labor. That was why he would never be able to understand.

Here they relied on each other, the strong helped out the weak because in this world nothing was to be taken for granted. When the strong were sick or injured they were not then overcome by the weak, they were taken care of in return until they could get back on their feet. It wasn’t a prison camp, it was a community.

Negan probably didn’t even remember what that felt like. He could scoff at Rick for the lack of ‘fun’ all he wanted. Rick had something more important.

He almost felt pity for the monster in front of him.

They walked around a bit longer in the heat of the day, and eventually Negan went straight back to talking again as if Rick had any interest in anything he had to say to him.

“Yessir, if you were just a little more enlightened to how the world is now as opposed to how you wish it was you’d have a much better setup for yourself here. You could have the biggest, bitchin-est house here! That samurai chick is hot as fuck, but she ain’t the only pretty gal you got running around here. You could be having a shit-ton more fun. Of course, maybe it’s hard to notice that with how they’re all dressed up for ditch-diggin’. Not everything has to be function over form. Personally, I very much like to see a lot of good _form_. You know, if you played ball and did a good enough job for me I could do right by you in return and help you bring this about to the way it _could_ be. The way it _should_ be. You wouldn’t have to be bustin’ your own ass over every lil’ thing. You could be livin’ large just like I do, while at the same time keeping your people alive-

Rick grew tense when Arat came jogging up to them from across the road, an AK carried across her chest. She didn’t even bother looking in his direction, focus entirely on Negan. “We got some resistance.”

Rick’s heartrate skyrocketed at the words, wondering who it was that he might lose just because that was the immediate response he had been conditioned to expect at this point.

Negan’s grin dropped entirely. When he finally spoke his voice was a low growl. “What kind of resistance? I thought I made it pretty damn clear at the church before that I’m not in the _mood_ for any complaints while I’m here.” He scowled back at Rick, like it was his fault that his people were bull-headed like him.

“We started looking through other houses- house hunting- but we got some guy asking that Rick be present before he lets any of us in his. Says he’s got his children in the house.”

Aaron was away scavenging. It had to be Eric.

Rick turned pleading eyes towards Negan. “I can head right over there. I’ll take care of this.”

Negan scoffed, but gestured for Rick to lead the way.

It was only a short distance, and Negan and Arat strolled leisurely behind, but Rick practically sprinted ahead to Aaron and Eric’s house. Eric was standing on the porch looking on the verge of panic as he blocked off Gavin and Dwight from entry.

He was instantly relieved to see Rick approaching. He quickly shuffled to the edge of his own porch to speak to him over the railing. “Rick! I swear I only asked them if they could circle back around in an hour because Judith was down for her nap and they started saying that I was resisting. Implying that I was trying to hide things and they would take away this house too if they had to to prove they had more right to be in it than I did! They sent Arat off to find Negan despite my protests that that wasn’t necessary and I told her I wanted you present too. I swear I wasn’t trying to cause any issues-

“And yet here we all are,” Negan’s voice boomed as he strolled up on the side of Rick.

Rick turned to the bigger man, knowing he hadn’t been able to hear the whole story. “It’s not resistance! He asked if they could come back only because my daughter was taking her nap. I- I can wake her up and-

Negan actually rolled his eyes. “For fucks sake, your people gotta make every little thing into a big thing. Dwight- Gavin, go house-hunt elsewhere. I got this one.” He rounded the porch, Dwight and Gavin getting out of his way as he climbed the middle of the stairs and snapped his fingers toward Eric before pointing at a little wicker sun chair that sat off to the side. “ _You_ can wait out here. Keep Arat company. Try to make her laugh, she loves a good joke.”

Rick glanced over to the scowling woman doubtfully. Her eyes only narrowed harder on Eric, who swallowed anxiously.

Before Rick could try to think of any help or reassurance he could possibly give to the smaller man, Negan clapped him firmly on the shoulder and pulled him along through the front door. “Say hi to your kiddo’s Rick, I’m just gonna poke around a little and- _shit,_ this place is ug-ly!” Negan declared after stopping in the archway between their living room and kitchen and taking in the general décor of their house. “Like Martha Stewart had a bastard child with Hobby Lobby… I’m gonna pronounce this place officially _off_ the market right now!” Negan laughed heartily.

Rick glanced back to the door, unable to see Eric but certain he must have been able to hear every word. Negan’s opinion of their home wasn’t something to actually care about given the circumstances, but Rick still almost wanted to apologize for the man’s asshole behavior.

Negan elbowed Rick lightly in the ribs to bring his attention back around, pointing to the license plate covered wall Aaron had been working on for so long. “Crafted by felons, displayed by yuppies. Looking at that shit all day is a punishment for prisoners and yet they’ve covered their fucking wall with the dirty things.”

“Knock it off,” Rick hissed. “…you’ll wake Judith.” It was the only way around shutting the man up that he could think of that wouldn’t get him reprimanded in return.

Negan snorted but said no more, strolling deeper in the house.

Rick’s attention was split between the man going into the kitchen where he proceeded to open up Aaron and Eric’s fridge and Carl coming into the living room from the guestroom where Judith and he were staying.

“Dad?” Carl prompted, turning his eye towards the kitchen in suspicion. “They’re looking through _everyone’s_ homes now?”

“I guess,” Rick could only answer lamely as he watched Negan pull a few things out of the fridge. “Hey, you said you would pay for anything you or your people took from us.”

Negan cocked a brow at Rick before holding up a baby bottle that had been prepared for Judith prior with a smirk. “How much does a bottle of milk run these days? I guess I can buy the lil’ lady a drink. You said something about waking her up. Even I know you don’t just wake a napping baby without offering up something to appease them.”

Rick sighed in exasperation, not amused as Negan tossed him the bottle. At least she didn’t need them heated up anymore.

Rick caught it and headed towards the guest room, but stopped when he noted Carl moving past him, stepping towards the kitchen like he meant to approach the other man. “What are you doing?” Rick asked, not meaning to sound quite as demanding as it came out.

Carl paused mid-step, glancing between his father and Negan, whom offered up nothing in the form of assistance but merely leaned against the counter to watch the exchange. “I thought you were gonna go feed Judith.”

As if that was reason enough for Carl to seek out Negan. As if there were _ever_ a reason for Carl to willingly go anywhere near the other man. “So you come with me,” Rick insisted, needing Carl to just stay away from the leader of the Saviors.

Negan didn’t look to care either way, observing wordlessly but with so many gears ticking away behind those dark eyes. Carl eventually relented, turning back towards Rick a bit sheepishly and walking with him to where Judith had been settled.

“What is with you?” Rick asked in a hushed whisper towards his son as they walked into the guest room. “I don’t want you anywhere near him while he’s here.”

Carl just shrugged. “He’s still just a man, Dad. When I was at the Sanctuary he-

“He’s _evil_ , Carl,” Rick stressed, frustrated that he had to remind anyone of that. Carl had been there that night too. It had been his arm stretched out on the ground in front of Rick. How could he of all people think any differently? Hadn’t he just gone himself last week to gun the bastard down behind Rick’s back? “Negan is a monster.”

“So am I. I have that same thing in me that allows me to be a monster to survive this world. You do too. We’re here still because of it. Michonne told me she was too before finding us. We’ve all got that in us, Dad, just like he does. After the claimers-

“Carl!” Rick snapped, never fond of recalling what he had done, even if he didn’t regret doing it. He wasn’t about to let his son talk about it with Judith in the room, however, even if she was sound asleep. There was also the frustration of hearing his son defend the man at all, even if it was just to point out they all were capable of being monsters. Surely his son could see- “It’s different, Carl,” Rick protested, sinking down onto the daybed that Judith was sleeping soundly upon and gently picking her up to shift into his lap so he could better feed her. She stirred slightly as she was shifted, but remained sleeping for the most part. He kept his voice low in hopes of not being overheard outside of the room, half expecting Negan to come bother them some more. He was probably picking through more of Eric and Aaron’s things, so Rick wanted to feed her quick and try to get the man out of the house. “What we have done we did to survive. To keep each other safe. What he does he does for personal gain off the blood and backs of others.”

“It has kept a lot of people alive though… the outposts and the Sanctuary all add up to hundreds of people. That’s a common goal we all have between us. They’ve been kept alive and mostly in order-

“Carl-

“No! I’m not saying he’s _right_ , Dad. I’m not trying to say he hasn’t had a lot of personal gain or that his system isn’t in fact built on slavery and extortion. I’m just saying, it doesn’t seem beyond redemption. If it could be changed… if _he_ would change and we could work together-

Rick made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. He slipped the bottle into the mouth of his half-sleeping child so she could latch on instinctually, drowsy brown eyes so like Shane’s looking up at him from barely cracked lids as she fed. He tried to give her a tight smile even as he continued speaking to his son. “It won’t change, Carl. _He_ will never change. Our extortion is close enough to us all working together to suit _him_. He’s not interested in peace between the communities. It’s just never going to work out that way, Son. I’m sorry.”

Carl stayed silent, not fighting with Rick’s sentiment, but not agreeing either. Wishing things were different wouldn’t make it so, however, and Rick hoped that Carl would at least respect him enough to not rebel against what needed to happen in the end.

“Carl, I don’t want you hanging around him or the other Saviors at all. I don’t feel like I should _have_ to say that, but…”

Carl gave a small shrug of his shoulders, sulking but not fighting. “Yeah, I know.”

Judith started fussing in Rick’s hands, the brunette sheepishly adjusting his grip on the bottle when he realized he hadn’t been paying enough attention and had sent a stream of milk down the side of her cheek rather than in her mouth. He wiped it off with his own sleeve and cooed to her till she settled again. It gained him almost a moment’s peace until the sound of something glass broke somewhere in the house, startling them all and waking Judith enough to pull a fuss out of her followed by a solid cry that she was now truly awake.

Rick pulled her up against his shoulder to bounce and try to burp at the same time, standing up and following Carl out of the back room to investigate. Eric and Arat were still waiting in the doorway, Arat looking ready to charge in if Negan shouted for her at all. Eric just looked anxious to find out what broke.

The noise came from the living room, Negan stalking out a moment later with one hand raised up in front of him and blood trailing down his forearm from a cut. His face was dark with frustration and pain as he stomped past Rick and his kids. “Fuckin’ dropped a fuckin’ glass orb thing they had for decoration,” he grumbled off as he moved on towards the porch. As he passed he snapped down at Eric, “You can clean it up, I don’t know where your fuckin’ dust pan is. I’ll make sure you get a can of food for it so we’re square. Don’t you dare let that baby girl into the living room till you’re sure all the glass is cleaned up. We don’t need her bleeding too.”

Eric nodded along, cowering away from the irate man.

“Move it!” Negan barked, stomping past him down the steps to go see about the cut he had. Eric rushed into the house, relieved to be allowed back in even if there was a mess now.

Judith burped in Rick’s ear.

He gave her a quick kiss to the side of her head and passed her over to Carl to continue bouncing, hurrying after Eric as he grabbed the dust pan from a closet in the hallway. “Eric, I’m so sorry about all this.”

Eric held up his hand to still Rick’s apologies, hardly seeming as upset as Rick had expected. “I’ll take a lil’ property damage over my husband being beaten any day, Rick. This is nothing. It was just a decorative ball I got from Pier 1 for like six dollars to make the shelf look less empty. You might wanna just go make sure he doesn’t take this out on anyone else for now.”

Aaron and Eric’s generosity towards him was unyielding; Rick gave the man another appreciative and sorry nod of his head before hurrying out after him. Arat was already moving on down the road, Eric’s house spared for the rest of the day at least. Rick figured Negan would retreat back to his own house to lick his wounds in private, jogging up that way.

He was right, seeing fresh blood dripped up the stairs of his own porch. It was further confirmed when he got inside, hearing the man rummaging around in the downstairs bathroom as soon as he got in the door.

The door had been left open, and he moved into the archway to see the large man cussing and holding his hand under the faucet as the water washed the blood away. He glanced to Rick, but didn’t run him off at all. Rick moved further in the bathroom, the father instincts in him compelling him to open up the cabinet to pull out the Neosporin and Band-Aids. The cut on Negan wasn’t that big, just one of those annoying little ones that bleed a lot. “Any glass left behind?”

Negan chewed his lip like he was considering making a crack, Rick pegging him with a warning look. One joke about Nurse Rick and he would leave the man to patch his own shit up. Really, he should do just that anyway. Negan was a grown man after all. It was the fear that he might prove to be big enough of a baby to take this out of someone else’s hide that had Rick hanging around, offering Band-Aids. “No, just got sliced when I first tried to pick the shit up.”

He had tried to clean it up himself? Rick’s brows drew in confusion that the man had bothered at all. Such a stupid little thing, but he hadn’t expected it. He opened up the Neosporin for Negan, holding it out for him to take and apply. He could do that much himself. “Are you angry?” he asked, wanting to just know if this would cost them.

Negan caught his meaning, cocking a brow as he took the little tube of ointment. “If you’re worried I’m gonna go back there with Lucille and level the score for blood shed, relax. This one’s on me.”

Rick did relax a bit, though he tried not to let it show outwardly too much. Negan couldn’t really get the Band-Aid on one-handed, so Rick opened it up for him. “Lemme see your hand.”

“Jesus, that Daddy-Rick’s showing his sweet face again,” Negan grinned, holding his hand out obediently for Rick to slip the bandage in place. Rick actually paused when he first grabbed Negan’s hand to hold it still, momentarily taken by surprise by how warm it was compared to his own. Negan must have just used extra hot water. It was noticeably larger too, meaty really, though his fingers were long. Rick slipped the Band-Aid over the cut and let go, subtly wiping his hand against his pant leg to remove the lingering warmth from it.

“You’ll live,” Rick declared once he was finished. _For a little longer at least_.

“Thanks, Daddy,” Negan winked, suddenly making the small space of the bathroom seem that much smaller as that grin turned teasingly salacious and Rick glared up at the man.

“Why do you go out of your way to try to humiliate others at every chance you get like that?” Rick blurted out, one to speak plainly and shoot from the hip- so to speak. Often that was enough to make someone back down or back off to be called out on their bull shit, but Negan wasn’t like most people.

His smile only grew wider at the edges and he leaned in even closer, dropping his voice even more. “Oh, did being called ‘Daddy’ embarrass you just now?” 

Rick kept his glare and his stance firm. “ _You’re_ the one that should be embarrassed, cracking suggestive jokes left and right at me in hopes that I’m homophobic enough to cow to you in order to just make them stop. We both know you’re straight, Negan. Carl told me about your wives. Stop pretending to be otherwise just to goad and embarrass others to get your way. I’m not going to blush and run off when we both know you ain’t about to do anything anyway.”

Negan’s brows shot up at that, a shocked air of laughter pushing past his lips. “Is that what you think?”

It was so indignant, that Rick almost felt doubt, his glare wavering just a bit as Negan moved even closer to him until he could feel the man’s breath puff against his lips. “You think I’m in it just for the tits and pussy, Rick? I’ll let you in on a secret… I just like what I like. I like sex, and I like things that are pretty and sweet and have a lot of nerve, and I really like to have sex with them. Now, I will be the first to admit I can be a hell of a flirt, but I’m not a tease. You don’t hear me making these jokes with a bunch of ugly assholes so full of shit there’s no room for my cock even if I tried to work it in, do you?”

Rick’s brows were the next pair to hit the ceiling at that little revelation. If Negan was flirting with him even half seriously he was more insane than Rick had ever guessed at before. Negan was a clearly attractive man, but there was nothing attractive about the sort of man he was. After Glenn… after Abraham… Rick could keep going with the names. After everything else the man had done to Rick and his people. Rick’s blood boiled. “If you even _think_ that I would ever-

“I don’t _think_ anything, Rick. I don’t expect anything either. Hell, if you think I don’t know the chances you are dead wrong. And honestly, between my wives and that samurai chick you’re out making booty calls to before beddy-bye time, I don’t think either one of us will cry if nothing ever happens. But shit- if a rejection is the worst I get then oh-the-fuck-well, I’m still going to go on being up front about it when I see something pretty and sweet and full of so much nerve it’s spilling out the poor thing’s cock-head. If you think that I wouldn’t do anything about it if given the go-ahead… try me sometime. I think you would be _very_ surprised,” he practically purred through that smirk of his.

Rick had said he wouldn’t blush and run off, but that was then, and this was now, and he knew his face was blood-red now- possibly his whole body was- and he wanted to run as fast as he could in that moment as those dark eyes leveled with his with all the seriousness of life and death.

_I’m not running away_ , he told himself as he slowly stepped back from Negan and out of the bathroom. He would sooner fuck himself on Lucille than _this_ man’s cock, and he hoped Negan could read that loud and clear across his abashed and glaring face. “I’m going to take Erin that can you promised him. You can square up with _me_ later. If you don’t need anything else you can just leave him alone till it’s time to leave.”

Negan looked at him like he saw right through him; clear as crystal. At length, he shrugged and turned away. “Suit yourself, but don’t go giving him something really good like beans just because you feel bad. That little bauble was as ugly and useless as the rest of their décor. It ain’t worth more than creamed corn at best.”

Rick ignored the man, stomping away with a face so red and hot he was practically sweating from it and a heart beating so hard he almost feared for his health. The absolute worse, however, was the nervous partial that had managed to start to form in his pants. That was all it was, a nervous reaction to the filth Negan had just spewed at him. Rick kept telling himself that until it went away. He could not fucking deal with the possibility of it being anything else this week.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please Review and leave a Kudos, thanks! Feedback is appreciated and if you're not wanting a response you can just leave a DNR at the end of your review.


	4. Chapter 4

“Rough day?”

Rick didn’t jump at Michonne’s soft question, though he hadn’t heard her coming up behind him in Aaron’s living room. He glanced back with a weary smile that matched her own after seeing she had brought him a cup of something to drink. Instant sweet tea that Eric and Aaron had made up the other day. He accepted it graciously as she sat down next to him on their sofa.

After coming back over to give Eric a can of baked beans- because screw what Negan thought _anybody_ deserved- Rick had just sort of stayed. He wasn’t hiding, but that was starting to sound like a flimsy lie even in his own mind as he continued to remain until Michonne and Aaron had both returned from their runs, and then through supper, and then even later into the night. At this point his kids were both asleep on the daybed in the guestroom and Aaron and Eric had retired to their own room for the night, reminding Rick once more that he could stay if he wanted to. He had insisted that wouldn’t be necessary, but he had yet to leave.

“I’ll let you know if one’s ever _not_ rough,” Rick sighed, taking a drink. His mind had been skipping through his conversation with Negan ever since leaving the house, haunting him like the world’s most frustrating poltergeist.

Michonne reached over to take his free hand that had been resting on his leg, giving it a squeeze and drawing him out of the miasma of his thoughts. Rick gladly returned it, thankful for her. Just all of her.

When she then looked him in the eyes and told him they _would_ get better, he could believe her like he wouldn’t have believed anyone else. He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers, comforted by the warmth, drawn in by the softness, and drugged with the taste of sweetness from the glass of tea she had already drank herself. If they were in their own home he would have taken her hand and led her up to their bedroom, but he growled and broke away at the reminder that if he did that now he would find Negan there.

Negan on a proper fucking _mattress_. Negan grinning, licking his lips and telling him _‘try me sometime’_.

Rick went red, with anger or embarrassment he didn’t know and didn’t care, burying his face in his hands to give it a good rub like he could wipe the thoughts from himself if he just did it hard enough.

Michonne was still there for him, throwing an arm across his shoulders and scooting in closer to his side to hold him. “They _will_ get better,” she promised him again confidently. “I managed to find some food today. Not much, but it’s ours.”

It did cheer him up a little to hear that news, glancing over to her. “Yeah?”

She smiled big enough to flash the whites of her teeth. “I saved something back for you before adding everything else to the inventory. I’ll give it to you when this week is over. I got a feeling you’ll need a lil pick-me-up before we go on our trip.”

“Not gonna give me a hint?” Rick smirked, placing a hand on her knee to rub it in unspoken appreciation.

She just kept smiling, moving the topic along rather than answering. “Aaron didn’t find anything today, but he said he thinks he’s onto something. He asked me to go with him tomorrow. I hear Rosita’s team turned up a couple bags worth of mushrooms from the forest. We’ll have mushroom soup enough for everyone this week.”

Rick smiled a bit more at that, glad to hear it. “I should be going out there too. Maybe tomorrow-

“Rick,” Michonne cut him off, softly. “Eric told me while we were washing the dishes  after supper and you were in here talking to Aaron that Negan and the other Saviors came around here today, ready to create a problem. He told me that you kept it calm. We’ll be okay out there. You’re needed here. Eric appreciated you being here today, and I know Aaron will too when he’s told. The kids were safe too with you being here. You don’t need to worry if you’re doing enough or not. You are doing _everything_ for us all.”

He could appreciate her sentiment, nodding along stiffly because it might be true that he was needed here more. He wouldn’t admit that he just didn’t want to be here. He recalled Negan shaking his head at him just that morning for taking on the brunt of every burden without any perks and how he was burning himself out. He was feeling that burn right now and a part of him that might have been selfish wished he wasn’t taking on this one. If he could go running around in the woods looking for food, just shirk the responsibility if anything bad happened back here to those he loved…

Wishful thinking, and better than he deserved.

“I- I better head back to the house.”

Michonne let Rick push himself to his feet, but kept a light hold on his hand. “You could stay tonight if you want. I could give you the couch and take the chair.”

Rick leaned down and gave her another chaste kiss, but shook his head stubbornly. “I’ll see you tomorrow- take care of yourself. Get some good sleep.”

“Try taking some of your own advice,” Michonne sighed, getting up to at least see him out the door.

Rick made his way back to his house, seeing Dwight still up and keeping watch from the porch of one of the reclaimed houses. The blonde man watched him in silence as he passed by, looking like he almost wanted to say something, but ultimately keeping quiet.

Rick expected Negan to already be shut up in his bedroom, as he had been the night before when he returned. He stopped mid-step to find the devil himself sitting in his living room, working his way shot by shot through a bottle of whiskey Rick had had saved back. He looked nearly drunk already, and he wasn’t even moving around much, making Rick worry that maybe he was in fact wasted.

Despite that, he spoke very clearly- if not a little more loudly than necessary- when he saw Rick come in the door. “Riiiiiiiiicccccccky- _boy_! Look at you, sneakin’ back in from tom-cattin’ around! It is fuckin’ adorable! I’m fuckin’ proud of you- really. I was worried I might be crampin’ your style. Did you leave any out there for me? Shit- who would I even ask? Damn shame about Olivia… the fat chicks are always fuckin’ wild. They got somethin’ to prove, you know, and they’re soft all over… you got to try yourself one sometime.”

Rick grimaced at the man’s horrid candor.

It was only made worse when Negan laughed heartily again. “There’s that infamous Grime’s stink-eye.” He continued to chuckle as he poured himself another shot. “Come sit with me, have a drink.”

Rick continued to glare as he turned towards the stairs. “I’m going to bed.”

“Sit. Rick.” Negan barked sharply.

Rick didn’t dare disobey that tone, though every inch of him itched to snap back that he wouldn’t be talked to like that in his own home. He could hear the reply, however, Negan just telling him that it was his home more than it was Rick’s because he belonged to him anyway. He walked over on stiff legs, taking a hesitant seat on the chair next to the couch where Negan was, hardly able to meet his eye between his frustration and the lingering humiliation from earlier.

Negan slowly extended the shot glass out for him to take. “That’s better now, isn’t it?”

He wasn’t actually asking for an answer. Rick took the shot and tossed it back. The burn hit him harshly, but he swallowed it down his bitter throat, appreciating the warmth in his stomach. “What do you want?”

Negan scoffed, immediately holding out the bottle to refill the glass. “To have a fuckin’ drink with you. It’s overdue.”

Rick didn’t take this one right away, hardly able to look directly at the man since what he had said in the bathroom earlier. Rick hadn’t been about to tell Michonne or anyone else about it. He bit back the urge to point out they had had a drink now and ask if he could be dismissed if that was all Negan wanted.

Negan’s grin widened like he knew exactly what Rick was thinking to himself. He most likely did in this case. “Ain’t you going to ask me how the house hunt is going for everyone?”

Rick refused to let the ire show on his face, keeping his voice flat and his eyes fixed on the shot in his hand. “I assume you’ll tell me if you find anything.”

Negan huffed through his nose in mild amusement. “Well, not much to tell yet… still lookin’. Haven’t found any squatters takin’ up residence at least. Course if we did, we would happily remove them for ya, Rick.”

Rick immediately thought about Daryl, his eyes snapping over to Negan’s. “You’re still looking for Daryl then?”

Negan pretended to look surprised by the very notion. A poor act. “Daryl? Why would you think we were lookin’ for _him_? You told me he wasn’t here, after all. So I can rest assured that he’s not. After all, Rick, you would never hide anything from me that could get you- or someone you cared about very much- into some serious trouble, would ya?”

His tone was so mild and pleasant, that it only made the threat more prominent within those words, the implications stronger. Negan at least suspected something was up in Alexandria, he had to. If they weren’t looking for Daryl, they were at least looking for any evidence of some sort of wrongdoing. Thing was, they wouldn’t find it; _yet_.

Rick managed to look rather bored as he threw back the second shot and sat the glass on the table, his own tone flippant. “If we do have an issue with squatters in this town, I assure you it’s a very recent development that will hopefully be resolved shortly,” he bit out, meaning Negan and his people, ready to feign innocence right back at the man if he took offense to it. Negan caught his drift, but only leaned back further in his seat and chuckled in amusement. Rick decided to try to broach the other thing he had been wanting to ask Negan about, since they were on the topic of him taking people. “Eugene… is he… _settled in_?” When he had asked for Daryl to be returned before Negan had made it clear that Daryl would continue to suffer and ask for more for his transgressions against him rather than be returned. Eugene making a bullet that sank into Lucille- Rick doubted his fate to be any different. He just hoped Negan would tell him if Eugene was mostly okay or not. Hopefully at least still breathing. He had gotten to at least see that much for himself with Daryl. If Eugene could just hang on for another couple weeks as a prisoner-

“Oh he is peachy-fuckin’-keen, Rick,” Negan laughed harshly, truly tickled by the question for some reason as his grinned wide. “Peachy-keen! Yes, settled in just fine! He’s staying in one of our best rooms- livin’ even better than you are. And he is contributing to making the Sanctuary even bigger and better with that smarty-pants power of his. You and I both know he was wasted on you. Shit, he damn near ran into my arms once he realized he was finally home. That he was _Negan_.”

Rick could hardly make sense of what all Negan was saying, knowing he looked lost even without the large man sniggering at him. “H-home?”

Negan poured Rick another drink as he tried to comprehend what the man was implying. “Indeed, man’s a fuckin’ brainiac. He figured out in less than a day what I still haven’t been able to sink into your own fat skull. You can either get on board or get run over. When you play by my rules you can be livin’ on Easy Street. Try to cheat, break the rules, or refuse to play at all…” He took a drink straight from the bottle before finishing his thought, shaking his head woefully. “Life gets real fuckin’ hard real quick. Don’t it, Rick?” he bit out spitefully.

He was so caught off guard by Negan’s absurd declarations about Eugene. He knew more about the man than Negan did, obviously. Eugene could be self-serving. He could be cowardly and sneaky and he could also, like Negan, use people to his own advantage. With most of Alexandria already aware of all that, Eugene was relatively harmless. Maybe Eugene had found some way to play up his own manipulations with Negan’s group like he had originally with Abraham until Rick could find a way to get him back. Maybe he was cowardly enough that it wasn’t just an act, but true defection for his own personal gains. In which case, had he known or suspected anything he might have passed along to Negan to tip him off about their group? Was that why Negan was here now with his people, watching them all? At Negan’s final biting question, Rick knew some of the upset and double-guessing he felt was written in his blue eyes. Hopefully the man would just take it in terms of the news about Eugene. Or maybe just in reaction to the cruel salt being rubbed in with the reminder.

Negan’s lip actually curled up in the corner in some sort of twisted satisfaction with that look. “Yeah, you know how hard life can get, don’t you? That tape you made of when you first got to this place… _that_ man knew how hard life was. That man was a _beast_. A real fuckin’ monster.”

Rick actually flinched at the man’s choice of words, thinking back to his discussion earlier with his son and feeling shame at the truth about him being voiced once again.

Negan leaned forward in his seat, getting right in Rick’s face once more. Rick could strongly smell the alcohol on his breath as he got closer. Negan dared to reach out to grab his chin firmly in his hand, forcing Rick to meet his eyes. He searched Rick’s blue ones back and forth like he was looking for something. “I’ll bet he’s still in there somewhere,” he murmured, mostly to himself, hot breath hitting across Rick’s lips. “I’ll even bet the day will come that I’ll get to meet him. I’ll bet you’re even more beautiful then than you are right now.”

Rick’s eyes widened at the asinine comment. Beautiful as a monster… he wasn’t even sure he could wrap his head around that concept. The reverence in Negan’s eyes just at the thought was enough that Rick jerked his head from the man’s grip, consequences be damned. “You’ve had enough to drink,” he growled. “Are we done here?”

Negan stared at him for a moment, expression unreadable. Slowly, his eyes slid down Rick to the table in front of him where his drink still sat. “Not till you finish your drink,” he muttered petulantly.

Rick tossed back the drink and slammed the glass down with a _‘BANG’_. They were done.

 

* * *

 

Negan was miraculously spared from any hangover the next day, unfortunately. Rick would have preferred Negan to have drank enough to get himself laid up the whole day so that he could have a little rest as well. Negan’s luck beat out his own today, however, and Rick had the misfortune of waking up with a start to the man standing over him, already dressed and ready for the day ahead. He realized he had woken so abruptly because Negan had dropped the head of Lucille down on the wooden floor of Carl’s room not even a foot away from where Rick’s head had been resting on his pillow. Rick nearly started shaking when he realized it.

Stupid, he scolded himself, sleeping so soundly that it would have been only too easy for Negan to put him down. He knew that was the message being given underneath everything too, despite the large man’s easy-going manner as he smirked down at Rick expectantly. “Rise and shine! I’m tired of sitting around this two-bit town doing jack-shit with my thumb up my ass. I know you gotta be too. All your people going out on runs… I know you usually go out too. Part of your whole I-gotta-suffer-worse-than-anyone shtick and all. You gotta be gettin’ antsy too. Up and at ‘em.”

Rick could only stare up at the man incredulously, one eye kept on Lucille so long as Negan was the one holding her. That first night had traumatized everyone to it whether they wanted to admit it or not. Rick was no different in that, but he grit his jaw and tried to rise above his own unease. “The hell are you on about?”

“I’m going out on a run of my own. Me and a few of my guys. Gonna look into one of the cache locations that Spencer prick turned up for us last week. Figured you just might wanna come along.”

Go out on a run with Negan and his men to watch them loot a cache that could have been theirs? “Pass.”

Actually, Rick’s hopes were lifted just a bit by the idea of Negan getting out for a bit. even if it was just an hour or two. Maybe he could go around and check on his people during that time, see that they weren’t being harassed past their breaking points. Maybe he could at least bask in the break it would give him from the man.

Negan’s face soured by his disinterest. “Even if I promised you a share of any food we find?”

Rick did reconsider at that. If it was a larger cache… he recalled the cache he had found with Aaron the week prior, trying to picture if he had gone through that trial with Negan and his Saviors. Maybe they would have just tossed him into the walker-infested water to clear the way for themselves. Either way, he couldn’t picture coming out of it alive; not about to trust any of them like he had Aaron. “No,” he insisted, the word bitter on his tongue as he considered what he might have just given up for his people. Maybe it was nothing much at all. But maybe…

Negan arched a brow, surprised that Rick had refused. Maybe he was just a little impressed that Rick had given up the chance for more personal suffering and strife rather than take the risk for Alexandria’s possible benefit. It did weigh on him, heavily, but he just couldn’t. Not when it meant having to put any ounce of trust in Negan. Giving his trust to the Saviors to have his back, and having theirs in return… he just couldn’t.

Rick pressed his lips, refusing to let himself take it back. He pointedly ignored Negan’s stare as he tossed back the sheets of the little blanket bed and picked himself up from the floor. He would check on his people. Negan could go get bit for all he cared.

 

* * *

 

Negan had Dwight and Gavin rounded up within the hour with an old pickup truck to head out. Gary and Arat would be left in Alexandria, Arat in charge during his absence. Rick seemed to have made it a point not to be anywhere around. Not that Negan noticed. Not that he gave a fuck.

It just pissed him off a bit was all.

He had expected Rick to want to go with them. Wasn’t he just normally all gung-ho about going out and playing hero? Going out further than anyone else and staying out longer? Negan had been looking forward to actually getting to see the man in action. He had seen Rick afterwards before, exhausted and covered in sweat and dirt and sometimes bits of blood that weren’t his own. Negan wanted to see it happening, the stoic and desperate Rick Grimes giving his all and directing that full brutality on something that wasn’t himself. Who knew what was in the cache they were going to investigate; Negan had thought for sure it would be enough to lure Rick out to play.

As Dwight and Gavin got their shit together a few Alexandrians had tentatively come out  on the street to watch. Most likely they were hoping that the Saviors were leaving-leaving, worried that it was maybe even a bad sign if they were.

Bitter toward’s Rick’s nonparticipation, Negan scowled at the lot of them, wondering if they were all as pussy-footed as their ‘fearless leader’.

“Hey!” he shouted, causing a few of them to flinch like they would turn tail and run any second. He had their attention at least, “A few of us have a potential cache to look into… one of your own supplied us with the location of it before spillin’ his guts in front of everyone.” He let the words hang in the still air a moment, stinging the Alexandrians. What could he say, Rick had him feeling antagonistic this morning, and he knew what would spite the Grime’s man best if any of his people were up for spiting him too. Given the recent unrest, they just might be. “Now I offered the chance to Rick to go with us so he could have a cut of whatever we found there for Alexandria, but I guess he would rather go for a stroll this morning. So I’m gonna make that offer to the rest of you. Anyone want to come with and earn a piece of the loot?”

Nobody said a thing. A few heads turned about to look at each other, eyes telling each other it was a trap or trick of some kind.

Negan supposed he had his answer after a minute of continued silence and milling about. Nobody was about to put an ounce of trust in the Saviors to try to work with them; even for the chance of reaping a cache one of their own had risked his life getting the location of. Negan wished he was more surprised than he was, a sneer curling his lip before he brushed them all off with a disgusted wave of his arm. Fuck them all then. At least he had gotten a few more barbs in. 

“We ready to go yet?” he snapped at Gavin.

“Sure, Boss,” the man merely shrugged, stepping up into the driver’s seat of the pickup they were taking out. Dwight climbed into the back to sit with the guns and keep them secure.

“I’ll go.”

The voice had been so casual and firm that it took Negan a moment to realize what had even been said to him, turning to see Carl suddenly standing there, just a few feet away from them. He hadn’t even realized the boy had approached them, hadn’t seen him in the crowd when he had scanned it. Standing next to the truck with that awful hat on and a firm determination in that one remaining eye... Negan couldn’t help but genuinely grin despite himself.

“Excuse me?”

Carl only straightened his spine even more. “The cache; I’ll go if you mean it- that I’ll get a share. He glanced to the two other men in the truck. "I want one-fourth of anything we get. There’s four of us going, so I should get a fourth for Alexandria.”

Negan let out a brief laugh. “Shit Killer, not that I don’t admire the hell out of your gumption, but I think we both know that if Rick were here to hear you say that he’d-

“But he’s not, is he?” Carl bit back. “So are we going or not?”

 _This fucking kid_ , Negan marveled, not for the first time. Shit, not even for the second or third… he had lost fucking count at this point of how bad ass Carl could be. Rick would have an absolute war with Negan when he found out…

Maybe he was just pissed enough at Rick to want to take the chance to slap his tight ass with this big ‘fuck you’ to him. Maybe he just liked Carl enough that he was genuinely even more excited by the idea of going on a run with him than he even had been with Rick. The combination and the general admiration for Carl wanting to go collect for everyone else had him agreeing. “Okay then, but you listen to me while we’re out there. I’m not about to bring you back here without your other eye so you do what I fuckin’ tell you when I tell you. Understood?”

Carl gave a small nod of his head. “Sure.”

The few Alexandrians still hanging around were incredibly anxious now, not knowing what to do. It didn’t look like any of Rick’s main crew were among them, most of them already out on runs of their own.

Negan directed Carl into the middle of the cab between himself and Gavin where he would be safest. He flipped the bird out the window to the few pussies still watching as Gavin drove them out through the gates.

“Your daddy is gonna shit a fuckin’ brick,” Negan sniggered.

“I’m not out here because of him,” Carl replied coolly. “I’m out here because I can help Alexandria.”

Je-sus, that Grimes righteousness ran deep. Negan scoffed at the cool way Carl kept his eye forward on the road. “Sure you are, kid,” was all he could respond with.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negan does a run with Carl. Rick is less than thrilled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter, thanks for sticking with this story.

They drove out nearly an hour, Negan directing Gavin using the latitude and longitude guides on the road map they had- showing Carl how it worked for the first twenty minutes and then having him give the directions himself for the next twenty once he understood. Negan had passed it off as simply making the kid earn his share in this venture. He wasn’t going to let Carl jump into any danger head on, but he wasn’t going to let the kid just sit and do nothing either. When they started getting close Negan started showing Carl how to narrow down the location using the numbers following the decimals of the coordinates given until they had it narrowed down to within forty feet of the cache’s location.

They found themselves out in the forest, Negan grumbling about fuckin’ rednecks having to hide everything in the woods rather than a proper building. He was not an outdoors person generally. His bad mood about it seemed to mildly amuse Carl, however, the teen snorting laughter when Negan cussed and ripped his way through a few thorny vines grabbing at his jeans. Gavin wasn’t liking it any better. Dwight was as adapt to it as Carl was as he trudged along, looking all about for signs of anything hidden along the floor that could be a trap or cache.

It was after another hour of looking around for anything that Carl literally stumbled over a wooden sign that had been left rotting on the forest floor under the leaves. He had picked it up and flipped it over to find a nearly faded out message reading, ‘The white tree’.  After a brief scan around them Dwight had located just such a tree, all its bark shed off of it to leave it pale. A camouflaged bag dangled from a wire high up in the branches, and they managed to locate the wire and bring it down. It hadn’t been the only cache marked down on the list they had been given, so it wasn’t a great shock to discover there wasn’t much in the bag. More would have been nice through. Besides a few modest survival supplies there was a cluster of canned goods, as well as a hunting rifle and some shells. More promisingly, there was a bag full of medical supplies and pills that looked to have been lifted from a pharmacy or something. Negan divvied up a few canned goods and some pain killers and sleeping pills to Carl for his share. He wasn’t about to give the kid the weapon, and wouldn’t insult him by making his share the guy’s used sleeping bag when he had been the one to first find the sign leading them here.

Gavin opened up one of the cans containing fruit cocktail and they all took a share of it to quench their thirst and their hunger. Actually, the three adults unspokenly all took only a mouthful or two, leaving a little less than half of it for the kid to polish off.

Once the can was drained and they were all left standing there, Carl then spoke up to his dissatisfaction with the haul. “I was hoping there would be more.”

“Didn’t we all,” Gavin scoffed.

Negan didn’t say anything about it, seeing the disappointment on Carl’s face and figuring the kid had been hoping that maybe if there had been a lot of it that coming out here with them would have justified doing so. Especially to Rick.

With nothing more to be offered, they grabbed up what they had found and made their way back to the truck. It was only as they came within sight of the road that they heard walkers, plenty of them from the sound of it, all growling and moving along down the road in the opposite direction of them. There was another sound mixed among the moans and the growls, a clamoring like a tin can being kicked down the road… but louder.

It was strange enough and they were close enough to the truck that Negan took the chance to run up onto the road behind the little group to try to see what was causing it. Whatever it was was pulling their attention as they continued away from him so they didn’t even glance back to notice him. He couldn’t see over their backs, however. Following a feeling that whatever that sound was was important, he climbed up into the bed of the pickup to see better.

“Holy shit!” he breathed, eyes popping wide. That clanging was a fucking cow bell! The rotters were chasing down a fucking cow! “In the truck! Now!” he barked at the others, “There’s a steak dinner running down the fuckin’ road and I’ll be damned if one of those shit heads get a bite before I do! Move, move!”

Dwight joined him in the bed of the truck, grabbing one of the rifles to use against the little herd. Negan straddled the side of the truck bed, right behind the driver’s seat with one hand gripping the back of the cab securely and Lucille up and ready to start swinging in the other. Gavin jumped behind the wheel and Carl got in next to him.

“Let’s thin down that fuckin’ herd,” Negan ordered, slapping the top of the cab to get Gavin moving. The man did as told, just as intent on retrieving the cow as the truck peeled off down the road after the herd. There was maybe twenty or thirty of them. They could get through that. Gavin laid on the horn as he came up on them, slowing down the walkers just a bit with the noise confusion.

Dwight and Negan both ducked down and held on tight as the truck started knocking its way through the first few stragglers in case any went over or under the truck so they wouldn’t get knocked off themselves.

Negan leaned out and brought Lucille upside the head of a walker that was a little further out of the truck’s path. With the added speed of the truck behind it the walker was dead-dead before it hit the pavement. Dwight took a few shots at the ones turned towards them that were reaching out to try to make a grab. Shooting straight off the back of a truck was hard as shit, however, and he missed a few shots. One of them Carl managed to at least knock off their feet for an easier target later by opening up the door to nail the fucker as they drove through.

The truck knocked through several more, but the bulk of the herd was starting to bunch up between them and the cow and made it so they couldn’t just run their way through without risk of getting caught up on the bodies. Gavin had to veer off to the side and get ahead of them. Negan and Dwight knocked out several more walkers along the way. As the truck pulled up past the cow- that was when Negan saw it for the first time.

It wasn’t just a cow running, but a calf as well, tagging along as best he could at his mother’s back leg. _Holy shit_ , steak _and_ milk!  

Before Negan could get his hopes up too high, however, the cow veered off away from the truck, taking her calf off road and out into the open fields. The walkers turned in hot pursuit, gaining some ground. Gavin had to hit the breaks to cut the distance being put between them and the cow, turning them to the field and tearing through it.

Negan and Dwight both had to hang on tighter as the truck bumped and rocked on the rough terrain. They were too busy hanging on to be able to focus on taking out any walkers when they first made another pass, Negan cussing when the calf veered suddenly  and only narrowly avoided getting itself run over.

“Rope!” Carl shouted back from the cab, climbing halfway out of the window to reach back towards Dwight. “Give me the rope!”

The wire that had been holding the cache was in the back with them. Dwight tried to grab it and hand it over to Carl as fast as he could before regaining his footing enough to try to take aim at some more walkers, though at this point with the rough terrain anything that hit its mark was pure luck. That being the case, he still managed to luck out twice more, leaving only a handful of roamers still.

The calf breaking off had split the walkers into two groups now, but the cow and calf were hardly running much anymore, too concerned with trying to get around the walkers to get back to each other. One or both of them would be grabbed in no time if that kept up. “Take out those fuckers after the calf,” Negan ordered of Gavin.

He turned the truck and did as told, the vehicle sending a couple under the wheels to smoosh out. Negan let himself slide down off the side of the pickup bed while it was slowed, landing on his feet at a run and taking on the three remaining around the calf while Gavin and Dwight turned the truck to the remainders after the cow. Three solid wacks of the bat took out the walkers- four wacks to be sure. With the walkers gone, however, the issue was now the calf running away from him, crying out for its mother.

Negan didn’t really want to chase it up and down the damn field, but was unsure how to get a hold of it. Carl had the wire from the cache. He looked over to the truck, impressed and stunned to see Gavin and Dwight out of the truck and taking out the last two walkers on steadier ground, while Carl stood next to the cow, already having roped her around the neck and now petting and reassuring her that she was safe. Negan’s brows only lifted higher when the teen proceeded to lead her like a big slow dog on a leash over towards the truck.

The calf ran right past Negan to join its mother’s side once more of its own accord. Carl tied her off to the truck bed as if this was something he had done before in his life. “Thought your daddy was a sherrif,” Negan grunted. “Where did you learn anything about roping cows?”

Carl’s eye rolled. “Sherrif's deputy. And my mom’s parents had a farm. We’d go out there often in the summers. My Grandpa taught dad how to rope, and then dad taught me. Dad probably could have gotten her without even getting out of the truck. It’s been too long for me though, I’m rusty.”

Fuckin’ cowboy Rick. If that wasn’t a sexy fuckin’ thought. Not because the idea of cow pies and muckin’ out stalls excited Negan none, but he wouldn’t mind the chance to see Rick ridin’ cowboy style. “Well… shit,” Negan laughed, “Bad ass lil’ Grimes earning his share after all."

Carl narrowed his eye on Negan. “Speaking of that… it’s kind of hard to divide up two animals into fourths. If you let Alexandria have the calf we can call it close enough.”

Negan snorted a laugh and ran his tongue over his teeth in thought. “No fuckin’ way. I may not be a farmer but I know a pecker when I see one. That calf is a boy, and that means steak. If anyone’s getting a steak fuckin’ dinner some day it’s gonna be me!”

Carl frowned, glancing then to the cow.

“That’s not gonna happen either,” Negan interjected before the kid could insist. “A whole cow is hardly equal to a fourth of the loot.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Carl huffed in frustration. “If I didn’t rope her-

“One of us would have eventually,” Negan waved off, “Don’t get too big for your britches just over that. Tell you what… how about the milk? For as long as she’s producing, you have exclusive rights to the milk- save for what the calf takes, of course. You’ll probably want it anyway for that baby sister of yours.”

Carl seemed to consider it for a moment. “But she’s _your_ cow?”

“Yeah.”

Carl sneered at that, “I won’t very well be able to come out to the sanctuary to milk her!”

Negan considered that. Technically he didn’t have any need of either cow or calf yet if he was looking for the meat. Good thing for the calf he was missing steak far more than he was missing veal. “How about this then, I let them both stay in Alexandria. You care for them and keep her milked, and when the calf is old enough for some good eatin’ I’ll take it off your hands. Once the milk is dried up, same story.”

Carl considered the offer, but he had a counter complaint. “It’s a lot of work to take care of a couple cows… time, effort, feed- things we don’t have to spare with your fifty percent tribute every week. That’s a sour deal.”

Negan chuckled at the kid’s gumption at negotiating. “Okay… fair enough. What if in exchange for all that time, effort and feed, I take my fifty percent cut down to forty-five to even out the extra work being put into these two. I’m only offering this at all because I admire your fuckin’ balls kid.”

“Forty.”

Negan’s brows shot up. Now the kid was just being cocky. “Forty… but I also get a couple bottles of cold milk for myself with each pickup.” That shit was like liquid gold anymore. “That’s as good as the deal is gonna get,” he warned him before reaching out his hand. “Shake on it?”

“After the cow stops producing milk, you won’t jack the tribute back up to fifty percent?”

Freaking kid… “Fine- you have my word it will stay at forty even then.”

Carl slapped his hand into Negan’s, giving it a firm shake.

Negan chuckled and shoved the kid playfully towards the truck. “You would have made a hell of a used car sale’s man, kid. Alright, now that we got our shit straight, let’s start heading back. I’m half shocked your dad hasn’t come sprinting out across this field like a fuckin’ crazed ninja hunting us down yet.”

X

Rick was livid.

That wasn’t even the right word for what he was. He was an absolute force of nature pinned down inside of a human form and just waiting to unleash his wrath. He paced tightly back and forth just outside of the gate of Alexandria, waiting only because he had no choice but to do so, the storm inside of him swelling with each passing minute.

Arat and Gary watched him from inside the gate, guns drawn and ready in case he came at them again or -lord forbid- their boss return and Rick did something foolish.

It had been hours since Rick had found out his son had gone out with Negan's group. He had been checking in with Gabriel when one of the Alexandrians had come running up to tell him how Carl had volunteered and Negan had agreed to take him. He had wanted to go after them right away, but he didn’t know where they were headed. He didn’t even have a clue of the direction they went in. He had almost wanted to blow everything they had been planning, execute the remaining Saviors and set up an ambush for when Negan returned, but Gabriel had talked some sense into him from that. No one could track a car on a road either... so he was stuck.

Knowing he couldn’t slaughter them all hardly tempered Rick's absolute rage, however. Negan had taken his _son_. Taken him with them out where it was dangerous and anything could happen.

Christ, Rick thought once again to himself as he rubbed his face in agitation, what if something did happen. The cache he had found with Aaron had been dangerous. What if...

What if...

Rick's mind was drowning in the what ifs.

His back nearly popped for how fast he straightened up at the first sound of a vehicle in the distance, watching the road’s horizons like a hawk. Arat and Gary watched him do so warily from the other side of the fence. When Rick had first heard he had sought them out right away, trying to find out the location Negan had gone to. They didn’t know, and Rick had gotten the butt of a gun jammed into his stomach for his trouble when his anger got the better of him and he grabbed Gary. The man had been ready to try to beat the shit out of him, but Arat had ordered him off. Instead they just flanked Rick as he stomped down to the main gates to wait.

A vehicle appeared, but Rick's hopes rose and dashed upon seeing it to be the car Michonne and Aaron had taken even before the saviors had headed out.

Not that he wasn’t happy they made it back of course, but he still wished it had been his son.

Christ, what if-

Stop it, he chastised himself.

He jogged along the drive up to meet their vehicle, Michonne and Aaron both looking very concerned and instantly on high alert to see him outside the gate like this. "Rick, what-

Rick leaned down in Michonne’s window on the driver's side. "Did you see Negan and the others out there at all?" Maybe they had been out in the same direction.

Michonne looked as surprised as she was confused. "They went out?"

"Carl went with them," Rick growled.

The indignant shock that passed over Michonne's face was good to see; told Rick he wasn’t the only one up in arms about this. The mama-bear ferocity was simmering in her brown eyes, but her level-headedness was unshakable as she grit out in a fairly even voice. "We can figure out what to do about all this after we know Carl is safe. Do you know where they went? You can hop in the back and-

"I have no clue what direction they went in," Rick admitted, exasperated. He opened the back door anyway to climb in. Michonne thankfully already knew his intent. He couldn’t stand to just wait any longer.

"I can drive us around the general area. Maybe if we can find-

The sound of another, bigger engine approaching had everyone stopping. Rick turned to look just as he had with Michonne and Aaron.

This time, it was the truck that came over the horizon. The Saviors returning at last.

Michonne and Aaron opened up their doors and got out of the car too to watch their approach.

As it drove towards them Rick could make out the Saviors all there, Dwight standing in the bed, Negan and Gavin in front. It was moving fairly slow, and there was a clanging sound that could be heard echoing somewhere behind them. Just when Rick was about ready to run out in front in a panic for not seeing Carl with them, the truck turned with the road a bit and he managed to make out his son sitting on the side of the bed, keeping watch over a brown cow that had been roped onto the back of the truck and its little calf that trotted along behind.

He had expected they might stop, but Negan didn’t even bother so much as looking his way, driving right on around them and through the gate that Arat and Gary opened for them. Carl didn’t look at him either, and Rick damn near wanted to rip his son down from the truck bed as it went by him.

He instead got in the back of the car at Michonne’s ushering and they followed them back in through the gate.

The truck drove nearly a fourth of the way onto town, the merger crowd there growing even more as the horn blasted out the 'shave and a haircut' melody before Negan opened up the passenger side and strolled out, chest puffed up and chin lifted proudly.

"Well, thankfully one of you had the balls to go with us... because of the efforts of the little Grimes man here, the rest of you sorry sons will now have your very own little milk supply. It's been agreed upon- the meat will be ours, as well as a few bottles each week so long as she's producin’ still... and in return for their care the lion's share of milk produced is Alexandria's. Or at least, Carl's to split up how he sees fit."

Rick practically clawed his way out of the car, making a mad beeline right for the truck.

He was cut off almost right away by Arat and Gary, who recognized his intent to be threatening and drew their guns on him even more threateningly. Rick pulled up short, but his blood boiled as Negan's eyes found his, that grin wavering just the slightest bit.

"Carl!" He bellowed at his son, turning his attention there first. Arat and Gary wisely made no attempt to hold him off from approaching his own son.

Carl slipped down from the side of the truck, turning a level eye towards his father. Only Rick would have recognized the slim sliver of dread in his son's eye, a mere shadow of what he would have seen when Carl was younger when he used the tone he was now.

Rick pulled full dad-voice on his son- jabbing an angry finger towards Aaron's house. "Get in the house! Right. Now. I'll be in in a moment."

Carl didn’t cower, though he did glance around a bit at the crowd that had gathered, his shoulders drawing up just the slightest bit in embarrassment. "Dad I-

"Inside now!" Rick barked, past being able to talk to his son at the moment, torn between grateful he was safe and pissed he had directly defied him and gone out, putting himself in potential harm's way. And to go with Negan-

"Easy, Rick," Negan's voice drifted over, low and reasonable, which Rick was not right now. He was the very last person Rick wanted to hear from right now. "He did good out there. If we hadn’t had his help getting that cow I-

Rick raged, "Don't! You had no right! He's _my_ son! You had no right!"

Negan's expression darkened, but -surprisingly- he went quiet.

Rick turned back to Carl. "Go! You're grounded!"

Michonne winced, Negan cocked a brow, but it was Carl who looked the most indignant about the proclamation. "Grounded? Are you gonna take away the tv for a week, Dad? Maybe my video games?" he scoffed at the thought. "You _can't_ ground me. I'm old enough that I can be out there. I can go on runs. Take care of myself and others. This proves-

"Nothing!" Rick cut him off. "You're still a child, Carl! Now get back in the house! We will talk about this later."

His son’s face flushed dark red with his anger, much like Rick’s tended to. Carl opened his mouth, ready to argue some more despite the glassy look coming into his remaining eye, but Michonne grabbed his shoulder, her look both understanding and imploring as she shook her head for him to stop, for now at least. This wasn’t the place, and these weren’t the people to be arguing in front of.

There was a tense silence- save for the mooing of the cow- Saviors and Alexandrians alike watching as the Grimes ‘men’ argued.

With a frustrated shake of his head, Carl stomped away towards the house. Michonne went with him, keeping an arm around his shoulders in reassuring support. He wouldn't run off with her watching him, and Rick felt his concern for his son finally eased a considerable amount in the wake of everything.

His anger with Negan, however, persisted.

He rounded on the man, the saviors cutting him off once more. He reigned himself in enough to lower his voice to a restrained growl. "Can I talk to you at the house for a moment? _My_ house?"

Negan let his eyes roam over Rick, taking in his aggression. After a moment of consideration he made up his mind to indulge him, grinning big in a show for those gathered as he lifted his own voice. "Sure you can, Ricky-boy. Your guys can help my guys figure out where to put the cows. Hopefully we wont need yet another house for them too."

Assured that Negan would follow, Rick stormed down the street towards his own home. Carl and Michonne were sitting out on the front porch of Aaron and Eric's. Judith would still be inside with Eric. The second Carl's eye met Rick's he stood up and stomped back into the house, leaving Michonne to watch Rick and Negan's progression.

Her look towards Rick implored him to retain his control, to remember their end game.

Rick turned his glare to the ground until he was inside his own front door.

Negan followed him, and the second the door closed behind him Rick spun around and grabbed the front of the man's shirt, using it to shove him back against the door so hard it rattled like a snake's tail.

Negan's eyes hardened and he grabbed Rick's wrists, actually holding them in place so he couldn’t let go of Negan and start swinging. Rick leaned in close, right in the man’s face like he so liked to do to himself so often. "Rick..." Negan's tone was nothing but hot warning, but Rick had a warning for him as well.

"No- you _listen!_ My son is off limits. You wanna drag me out to where ever then do so but not him. You knew damn well I would have stopped him from going out, so don't pretend that shit wasn’t intentional to get back at me at all. You do not ever use my son- or any child- to get to me like that again or I will fucking end you! You gave me a set of rules to follow and I have nearly killed myself to do so. I give my son a set of rules too, but then you come here and undermined them. You wanna talk shit about the way I lead- well it makes it lot harder for me by undermining the rules I _have_ put in place."

Rick- wasn’t wrong. The part of Negan that used to have to deal with parents on a regular basis knew he had grossly overstepped, creating a wedge between father and son. Whether he meant to do so or not was irrelevant. His opinion of Carl's capabilities certainly differed from Rick's but, again, that also wasn’t his place. All the same, he clearly wasn’t keen on being spoken to and manhandled by his own subordinate, ripping the man's hands from his shirt and letting them drop into clenched fists at Rick's sides. He fixed Rick with a glare of his own. "You will watch your tone with me, Grimes. At this moment, your disrespect is more a danger to that kid's health than anything he faced out there in the field.”

There was a tense moment in which Rick didn’t turn away, didn’t back down. Every inch of him wanted only to take a swing at the man. To beat him up one side and down the other and fuck everything else that would come afterwards.

Negan more than met that glare, something dangerous staring right back at Rick from behind the man’s hazel eyes. There was very little space between them, but Negan dared to lessen it further, leaning down a little more till his face was right in front of Rick’s. “You got that same look on your face that I warned you I didn’t like when we first met. Do not make me have to wipe it off you again, Rick. We both know that I _can_.”

Carl’s arm stretched out before him flashed through Rick’s mind again, but it wouldn’t have to be that. Negan wouldn’t make it that simple this time if he was pushed any further. Maybe it would be Michonne’s arm. Or a whole lineup of innocents that inhabited Alexandria. Maybe it would be Carl’s neck this time. Or Judith’s.

Those last thoughts nearly buckled Rick’s legs, the tension in him snapping as if it had suddenly turned brittle and crumbling within him till his eyes dropped along with his ire. The worst slap in the face was the knowledge that Negan hadn’t even had to do much to make him heel like this. Not really.

He made a vague threat, and he was so far under Rick’s skin, so far inside his head, that Rick couldn’t stop himself from making the rest of it for him till he found himself backing down. It ate at Rick, knowing it was a standard victim’s response to extreme trauma.

He was not a victim.

He was not traumatized.

With Negan so close and looking at him like he was right then, just like he had been that first night they met, it was hard to convince himself of that as that familiar fear and dread knotted in Rick’s stomach, replacing his anger as it backed him into a corner within his own mind and body.

He had fucked up. He should have never lost his temper on Negan like this, not when they were already halfway through the week and so close to pulling off a plan of rebellion. Rick was putting it all at risk by having it out with Negan here and now, just like Michonne had been trying to convey to him.

Nearly choking on his own pride, Rick fully dropped his gaze, tried to lock the faces of those he loved and weathered this for in his mind as he cleared his throat. He still had a lot to lose if Negan deemed it necessary, and Rick wasn’t in a position yet to fight and win if it came to it.

“S-sorry,” Rick choked out, taking half a step back to further reduce the tension hanging between them.

Negan held the tension between them for another moment or two for good measure, still full of anger himself even if Rick was backing down. “Sure you are, Rick,” he gritted out, his jaw tight with frustration. “Just like you will be next time too, right?”

Rick’s panic started to creep up on him, concerned that maybe this would cost them after all if he was already too late to apologize. “I-

“Save it. Your ass is sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Rick was sure he hadn’t heard right. “I- what? Couch?”

That anger still burned in Negan’s eyes when Rick chanced a glance up to tell if he had indeed misheard. He would have been less caught off guard if the man had just announced another Alexandrian would die today in reprimand for Rick’s insolence. Sleeping on the couch…

Compared to the floor of Carl’s room it wasn’t even really a punishment.

Negan’s lip kicked up despite the hard look in his eye, at least partially amused by Rick’s utter lack of understanding. The man seemed to live for keeping Rick off balance more than anything else, and Rick was once more reminded of a ball of twine being batted around between a cat’s paws.

“Don’t think I’m cooking for you tonight either. You can just fend for yourself.”

He brushed past Rick in a huff, knocking his shoulder hard enough to surely bruise Rick's before he stomped his way up the stairs. Lucille dragged behind him, leaving a trail of red and brown gore from walkers on the carpet as he went for Rick to worry about cleaning later.

Rick could only stare incredulously up at the retreating man’s broad back, torn between feeling like he had just won the lottery and crucified himself all at once. He would just have to see if more wouldn’t come of this later, he supposed.

His bedroom door slammed behind Negan.

It likely wasn’t finished then.

Rick couldn’t really do anything about it right now, his own frustration rearing its head once more in the aftermath now that his panic was no longer choking it down. Negan wasn’t the only source of that anger, however, even if he was the lion’s share. After some shifting back and forth where he stood, Rick figured he would take the opportunity of Negan not wanting his company to go see his son.

Rick made his way over to Aaron and Eric's, his returning frustration seeping out from his with every step.

 Michonne wasn't on the porch any more, likely inside with Carl. Aaron sat there instead, Judith bouncing happily on his knee and giggling.

 "Rick... can we talk a moment?" Aaron waved him down, a calmness to his voice. Rick was far more interested in dealing with his son in that moment, but Aaron put a hand out to cut off his path up the steps, "Please, Rick? I have good news to give you anyway."

 Everything Aaron and Eric had done for him and his people and his children from the very start... Rick had a hard time refusing the man's calm beckoning.

 It was probably best he let some of his residual anger towards Negan drain out of him anyway before he confronted his son. He slowly sank down on the step next to Aaron after a moment of mulling it over. "I guess I could use some really good news right now."

Aaron smiled approvingly at him and passed over Judith into Rick's lap. Instantly rick found some comfort just in holding her little body against his. He took over the knee-bouncing for her and she giggled gleefully. Something about that noise was like therapy in if itself.

"Michonne and I scored today... that factory I visited to look for vending machines the other day- that was a bust. But, I found a promising lead. The vending machines there were picked through, but there was a maker's address on the machines themselves located here in Virginia. I went over some maps with Michonne last night and today we went and scouted out the manufacturer's location." His smile broadened exponentially.

Rick hung on to his words with bated breath. "And?"

"Jackpot! A slew of machines and snacks not yet shipped out and minimal walkers around. We left it for today because the car can’t carry it all, but we're taking Rosita and her team and a truck back there tomorrow. We're gonna be swimming in potato chips and corn nuts for months!"

Jesus... that was... Rick almost wanted to cry with relief.

Unable to form words enough to express that relief, Aaron still understood perfectly well by the mistiness of Rick's eyes and the way his shoulders lifted from the metaphorical weight easing off them just a bit, clapping Rick on the shoulder encouragingly. "Between that and Carl's milk... not a bad haul." 

Rick's relief slipped right off his face and over into something sour. Aaron hadn’t just brought it up without intent. "He shouldn’t have been out there." Rick growled. "If something had happened, or one of those Saviors did something-

Aaron put his hands up to show he wasn’t gonna fight it. "I know why you're angry about it, Rick. I'm not going to say you're wrong to be concerned or that you’re overreacting-

"Good," Rick bit out, standing up to head in again, but Aaron stood too and continued on.

"I'm just saying, his heart was probably in the right place. He is your son after all. He wants to help. Maybe... just keep that in mind. I don’t know a lot of teens that rebel by doing something for the benefit of the community, so I don’t really think this was meant to be against you personally."

Rick wanted to snarl and growl at the other man for trying to tell him anything about his own son or his parenting... but Aaron wasn’t really doing either. It was nothing new to Rick, just a gentle reminder. Rick felt the weight of it and held his ground for a moment as the anger and frustration started escaping from him like air from a balloon yet again. Just emotionally it had already been an exhausting day.

 _'Raise him to be good.'_ That was what Lori had wanted. More than anything else in the world. It was Rick's mission to fulfill that. Carl _was_ good. Carl wanted to help. Helping others meant going into harm’s way, however, and while the theory was sound, Rick was having trouble accepting the reality of it.

He carried Judith with him back into the house to get her out of the sun, though she wasn’t thrilled about it and started whining "Noooo!" at him for it.

He distracted her from her displeasure with a few small tosses above his head that had her giggling all over again before setting her on the couch next to Michonne.

He didn’t have to ask; she just pointed to the door of the guestroom to indicate Carl's whereabouts.

Rick gave a nod of appreciation before shuffling over to knock lightly on the door. Carl didn’t answer at all, so he likely already knew who it was.

Rick cracked the door open. Receiving no outcry of rage from the teen for doing so, he slipped inside and closed the door behind him. Carl pointedly ignored his presence, sitting on the daybed with his back to the door as he pretended to be invested in a comic book. It was the remnants of childhood like that that Carl still managed to cling to despite having to grow up so quick that made it hard for Rick to see past the boy he would still be if the world was right.

"Carl," Rick prompted, voice much softer than he had intended for it to be before talking to Aaron. "Let's talk."

He huffed through his nose, but didn’t put down the comic book he obviously wasn’t reading. "Go ahead,” he shrugged.

"You wanna maybe turn around and face me? Man to man?"

Carl snapped his head around at that, a deep scowl on his face. "Oh, now you wanna treat me like a man? Just when it best suits you, right? Not a half hour ago you were trying to ground me in front of everybody like a bratty child!"

Rick kept his wince off his face. He could understand his son's frustration, being emasculated like that in a moment that might have otherwise made people look to him a little more.

 _However_ , "You did the one thing I asked you not to do, Carl. I told you I wanted you staying away from them. I set rules around here when I have to to try to keep everyone safe, yourself included. There has to be some sort of consequence of they're broken." Jesus, now he sounded like Negan.

Carl only continued to scowl, and Rick let out a sigh and rubbed at his face again as he padded over and helped himself to a seat next to his son, facing the room rather than the wall.

"Maybe grounding you wasn’t the right answer, though. You might be right in feeling that you’re a bit past that, but don't think that means you're off the hook. Whatever Negan has you thinking about him-

Carl shook his head in frustration. "Seriously Dad? It’s not about him! You both do that, you get fixated on each other. You think of each other as these giants to be beat but there’s more to it. There’s a lot more than just him, Dad. I told you already, he's got hundreds of people- 

"We will beat them all,” Rick assured Carl, thinking he was worried about the numbers they would be facing soon.

"Dad, you're not listening!" Carl snapped, "That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about hundreds of people that are just trying to live. They're not all soldiers just because they serve under Negan they’re not all bad people. If this war happens hundreds of people on both sides stand to die, but you both look at each other like that's just the way it has to be because you can’t see past each other."

"Where is this even coming from? You just went last week to kill him yourself."

“And that was when I saw past him for the first time. I don’t think I was right anymore in thinking that killing him would stop this. He has such control over them all. I think if he was willing to see past you, to give a little bit, he would have the power and influence to turn them all around right along with him.”

Rick scoffed. This argument again. “Carl, he would never give on anything.”

"Negan was willing to give a little today.” Carl griped, “He's leaving the cows and he said something about cutting our weekly tribute by 10%."

 Rick's own scowl came forth as his frustration came right back to the surface. "How fucking generous.”

“I just mean it’s not impossible. It’s-

“Carl,” Rick stressed, done with this wishful thinking, concerned that maybe he had been the one to instill it in his son in the first place. “It’s not going to work out that way. It’s not. We will get through the rest of this week and then next week we will get Jadis her guns. After that we will take back our freedom from him and however many hundreds of people he might have at his disposal. It doesn’t matter. This is how it ends, not with words or agreements or peace. We are past all that. Can I still count on you when the time comes? Because it is coming soon.”

Carl looked caught between offended that Rick would even have to ask, and disappointed that he hadn’t been able to sway Rick’s mind at all. It was hard to sway from the truth, however, and Rick knew what he said to be the truth in this regard. With a sigh, Carl nodded his head. “Of course you can, Dad. I- I just hoped-

Rick pulled Carl against him, crushing the teen to his chest before he could utter another word. “I know. I know, son. I don’t ever want you to stop hoping. I’m sorry it has to be this way. Just- Negan’s different. The Saviors are different. But I don’t want you to give up on hoping for the good in people after this is all over. You hear me?”

Carl hugged Rick tightly in return. He nodded his head against Rick’s chest, but said nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happened, a lot more about to happen. Tags updated for future chapters. Shit is about to hit the fan, Negan will reveal the real reason behind the Savior's sudden stay in next chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negan wants something Rick isn't willing to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Richonne scenes.  
> Regan scenes very soon.

The whole following day was tense. For everybody. Things between Rick and Negan were tense. Between the Saviors and Alexandria were tense. Negan actually avoided Rick’s proximity like the plague for once. He had left Rick’s home before dawn had even come up, and although people saw him wandering about and talking to his own people around the enclosure, he made sure to always move on before word could reach Rick of where he was or what he was up to.

After yesterday’s little incident, it seemed the only ones perfectly at peace with everything happening around them were the cow and her calf, moved into a shed in Tobin’s back yard with the man’s blessing. They seemed perfectly happy there for now, the cow grazing through the backyard while her calf sunbathed.

After Rick’s trail through Alexandria eventually brought him around to them he just stopped to watch them for a bit, compelled by the animals he hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of for so long. Some of the tension he held close to his chest eased as he watched the calf start rolling all around in the grass to try to scratch out some itches on his back.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t glad for the accumulation of the cows. He couldn’t rightly deny the blessing they were. Under different circumstances he would have been elated. He only wished his son hadn’t snuck out to go on a run with- with _them_.

Rick wandered away from the backyard turned cow-pen just long enough to fetch a bucket and a crate he could flip over to sit on, figuring he might as well try milking her. Negan had said that the milk was theirs after all. He might have called dibs on the meat down the road, but Rick knew that the man would never get so much as a sniff of it. He would be long-dead by then.

The cow was surprisingly tame, ignoring Rick passively as he walked over to her and eventually settled in to milk her as she grazed contently. It had been a long time since he had milked a cow, Lori’s father showing him how a lifetime ago. As he managed to coax out the first couple streams he settled into his work, cooing to the cow softly now and then and getting the rhythm of it. The calf came over after a few minutes and sniffed at his back curiously, moving around him to put its wide nose right in his face and trying to lick the salty sweat there with a long slimy tongue. Rick chuckled and managed to push the calf off a bit.

The echo of another chuckle somewhere behind him took all the humor from him instantly. Warily, he turned his head around to see Negan standing against the little picket fence of the yard. He didn’t know how long the man had been there, but he looked comfortable as he leaned against it. Lucille hung from his hand, the freshly cleaned barbs shining in the sunlight that was probably what the man had occupied himself with in Rick’s room last night.

Rick’s tension came back to him like a spring and he stood up to address Negan directly in a tight voice. “You need something?”

Negan’s smile held no bite as it widened, but Rick’s scowl only drew deeper anyway. “Of course _you’re_ the one that’s out here doing the milking. Just gotta fuckin’ do it all, huh, Saint Rick?”

Rick wasn’t about to admit to the man that he actually found this sort of thing relaxing. Lori’s dad had taught him some ranch work mainly to test Rick’s worthiness of his daughter and also get a bit of free labor out of the deal, but it hadn’t given Rick any deep connection to it. Since Herschel, however, just about any farm work soothed him, grounded and connected him like little did anymore. Maybe it was just the idea of being a part of bringing life back into a world that was hellbent on dying. He wasn’t sure.

He simply continued to stand there and scowl, unamused until Negan’s expression darkened to match his.

“Come on home once you’re finished playing with Bessie,” Negan instructed. “We got some shit to talk about.”

His tone made it clear that Rick really wasn’t going to like whatever it was he had to say, and he clenched his fists at the mockery of Negan calling him home like some sort of deranged mother hen.

He continued to scowl as the man made his own way back to the house, Lucille swinging up to sit proudly on his shoulder.

“We’re not gonna call you ‘Bessie’,” Rick muttered to the cow in a promise as he slid back onto the crate. If for no other reason than Negan had been the one to say it.

 

* * *

 

Rick managed to fill the bucket with at least a few bottles worth of milk, intent on getting it to Judith. He dropped it off with Eric on his way back to his house, savoring the small detour before he had to go face the music that awaited him at his own. He told himself it was out of defiance that he took his time. Not fear.

Negan was there, of course, but he wasn’t alone. This time Dwight was with him, sitting at Rick’s dining room table across from the man, both waiting for him to join them in solemn silence.

“Sit down, Rick,” Negan commanded, tapping the seat next to him with the business end of Lucille.

They meant business, and Rick could only comply to stiffly take a seat, noticing some papers sitting in front of Negan with some scribbled handwriting on them. Most of them looked like notes that had been jotted down. The one sitting on top looked like a list. it wasn’t that he hadn’t been expecting this; he had. He just figured they would take till the end of the week to roll out whatever houses they wanted to take possession of from Alexandria.

“Those the houses?” Rick made himself ask over a dry bitter tongue.

Negan shook his head, glancing to Rick like he was some poor shmuck for asking such a thing. “No it ain’t. Turns out you and your group are gonna get a pass on giving up any of your homes to us for now.”

Rick could only stare at the man in confusion for a moment, uncomprehending. “But the deal was we didn’t have to split our scavenges with you from this week…” He strongly doubted Negan was giving them a free pass in the amount of no tribute and no houses. Certainly not if there was a list sitting in front of him.

“And I will honor my word on that,” Negan assured him, “But the houses are gonna have to be moved to the backburner. It’s come to my attention throughout my short stay here already that there are other and more effective ways we can both help each other out.”

Rick could feel his stomach tightening in dread. “What do you want from us then?”

Negan slid the list in front of him over towards Rick, letting him get a look at it. “I want to help you and your group out, Rick. I’m gonna save your ass with this new deal.”

Rick looked over the list. They were names. Names of Alexandrians. Some Rick was just barely familiar with, scanning for any of his inner group. Michonne wasn’t there, or Rosita, or Carl… Eric’s name was, but not Aaron. He wasn’t sure what this was supposed to be about.

Negan provided the answer. “I’m about to make your job a whole hell of a lot easier, Rick. You think I don’t pay attention to my people, but I most certainly do. You’ve been vastly overworked. You’re running around to keep not just your head above the water, but everybody else’s too. I had my people take a good look around as soon as we got here… see where the biggest inefficiencies were coming from. The ones that don’t contribute… that just weigh down and drain those that do. Those that drain _you_ , Rick. And the samurai chick, and all your other people that get out there and hunt and deliver for me. Those that just can’t or won’t pull their share in that endeavor for whatever reason are on that list.

Rick felt an icy fear creeping down the back of his neck like the touch of death and his heartrate jacked up in his chest in dread.

Negan continued, demeaner as pleasant as anybody making a sale’s pitch ever was. “These people don’t _have_ to be a drain, however, on you or anyone else. You might not have jobs available for them that are fitting their disabilities or capabilities, but that doesn’t mean they’re of no use to anyone. Take Eugene for example. For you he was a drain, let’s face it- call a dog a fuckin’ dog, he was wasted here, and so are these people. I took him with me and even though you didn’t have a use for him- shit, I sure did! Now he is contributing. He is providing for me, and he is one less burden off your own shoulders.”

Rick’s stomach was twisting in on him, his body awash with the cold realization of what Negan was driving towards. He had been a damn fool all along.

He had believed their word of wanting to look at the houses too much. It never occurred to him they were looking to see who was _left_ inside of them all day. When Negan had been over at Aaron and Eric’s Negan had just been a distraction. Arat was doing the real looking- sitting out with Eric, weighing his worth.

Rick’s whole body turned cold and he shivered at the realization of what was actually happening here. “No,” he growled.

Negan’s voice was a low warning in his ear. “Now Rick, I want you to listen to what I have to say here, and I want you to try to keep an open mind. It really is about what’s best for everyone in the end.” He brought up Lucille from where she had been sitting next to his chair, setting her to rest directly on the table top next to him casually, like he just preferred her there instead. Rick’s fists balled so hard they shook in his lap as his blue eyes fixed upon her, imagining her swinging towards him; imagining himself swinging her toward Negan.

“Now it’s not like we would leave you short-handed. This is where you come out the mother-fuckin’ winner, Rick. I got some people that I think would be damn good at going out on runs. Scavenging under your supervision for me and everyone else. I could move some of them down here to make up for those that we would relocate elsewhere to be trained up by you and- I was thinking perhaps Dwight, here. Realistically it would be easier for you to deliver a proper store each week with a deal like that. Shit, your stores and mine could both be filled in no time. Not to mention, you just won yourself a free pass Rick. You got people, and you got homes. I only need one right now, but if you ever come up short on your tributes you got yourself a little bit of collateral now. The next time you’re short, no one has to die. Consider it a one time-use ‘get out of jail free’ card. Shit, you’re making out so good in this deal that I should be the one sitting here with a grimace on my face and a pout on my lip, not you.”

“No!” Rick growled again, far more adamant this time as he turned the glare towards the man sitting so calmly next to him. Negan didn’t so much as flinch, meeting his ire with a level stare. “You’re _not_ taking our people! Those are _my_ people!”

There was a loaded silence that stretched out through the room. Negan was almost always so animated, that his utter stillness in it was frightfully unnerving. “Riiiiiick… we’ve been over this. I really thought you would understand by now,” he chided softly. “You are _mine_. What’s yours is mine. I didn’t pull you into a discussion here. It’s done, Rick. It’s fuckin’ done. I get to say what half is, and I say this time it’s a handful of Alexandria’s most useless, and furthermore I say who that is or isn’t. You might notice I was so generous to not include your daughter’s name on this list- although it’s not like she’s near old enough to go out on runs yet. I got a whole heap of women who would jump at the chance to play mommy to a baby, even some of my own wives, but her name is not on this fuckin’ list.”

Rick just about knocked his chair over with how fast he jumped to his feet.

Negan rose just as quickly, as ready for it as he had been when Rick had tried to come at him with the ax that first night they met. His eyes pierced through Rick with how sharply they focused upon him, but it paled in comparison to how his voice deepened and cut through the air like a white-hot razor. “Sit. Down.” Negan’s hand was still on Lucille, and though he hadn’t lifted her yet, Rick could see the way the man’s fist tightened upon her in anticipation for having to possibly use her. “I’m not going to break up your little family- didn’t I just make that clear enough for even _you_ to understand? The words you should be groping for right here are a big fat fuckin’ ‘thank you’.”

The memory of the last time he had had to thank Negan for sparing one of his children stung fresh in his mind still and he flinched like the memory had slapped him. Carl’s arm stretched out in front of him on the ground… nightmares of that moment still haunted Rick’s sleep often even though it was still attached to him. “Please...” was all he could manage to strain out in a thin voice as he slowly slid back down into his chair, some of the desperation from the memory of what happened with his son slipping into that pleading little word. How many times had he screamed it in that moment, begging for his son’s arm to be spared?

Negan’s eyes pegged him hard until he was fully seated once more, but Rick couldn’t give this up just like that. He hesitated, but managed to find more of his voice, though it was still strained, pleading for Negan to hear him. “P-please just… don’t you realize you _are_ breaking up my family? These names… some of them have families here that you’re wanting to take them away from. Husbands, wives, children… you’d be separating them… You can’t-”

Negan gave little pause, remorseless in his conviction. “People are a valuable resource; one that you have not been using properly. I’m going to fix that. You’ll thank me one day for how well this will all work out for you. Once I get you some more capable people here to replace them your days of worrying about providing for me and even yourself will be a thing of the past. The people here will be coming back with us at the end of the week to start working for points either at the Sanctuary or one of my outposts. I’m telling you this ahead of time as a Goddamn _curtesy_.”

Rick’s head was spinning, his stomach clenching so tightly he was half certain he would hurl across his own dining room table. He could hardly breathe through the lump in his throat, much less scream like he wanted to do right now.

It was through the haze of his own shock that Negan’s voice filtered through. “Rick, I said that I was telling you this as a curtesy. Now what do you say to me when I do you a curtesy?”

Rick squeaked out a strained, “Thank you,” before he even realized it was coming out of him; speaking on auto-pilot and knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that it was largely due to his trauma from the last time they had been in this situation. Negan was conditioning him, or at least trying to. Succeeding better than Rick ever wanted to admit to himself.

Rick couldn’t bring himself to look away from the list in front of him. He didn’t have to look to know that Negan was smiling pleasantly at him now that he had gotten his way. He didn’t look up when Negan got up from his chair either, Dwight following suit to head out. He didn’t even look up when Negan stood directly behind his chair and patted his shoulder encouragingly. “It’s gonna all work out, Rick, you’ll see.”

* * *

 

The sun was starting to sink down over the tree lines, casting everything into ember hues and sparing the earth from the continued scorch of the summer sun. It was cooling down rapidly with the approaching night, but Rick couldn't feel the relief of it. He couldn't feel hardly anything. He felt no more alive than the walkers outside the gates and he ambled along just as listlessly till he reached Aaron's place.

He almost didn’t even realize he had taken himself there until the door opened up and he was suddenly looking straight into Aaron's eyes.

Had he come here because Eric was on a list and didn’t even know it yet? Did he come here to warn them, or maybe apologize to them for not seeing what was going on before? For not being able to stop it with his daughter’s placement being held over him? Rick's throat seemed to close itself up the second his eyes met Aaron's.

"Rick! Uh- are you okay?" Aaron's cheery greeting fell into concern right away for whatever was on his face right now. Rick didn’t even know.

"C-can I speak to Michonne?" He managed to utter. Again, he wasn’t even aware of how badly he wanted that until the words had left him. He had come here because he needed to see her. To hold her and tell her what had happened and be held, just as she had been doing so far. She was his rock to lean on.

Aaron seemed surprised that he felt he even had to ask, but he was surprised again when he invited Rick in and was refused.

"If she could come out here, that would be fine." Rick murmured.

Aaron cocked a brow, but nodded and wandered inside to go get her.

How could Rick possibly step foot inside Aaron's house when he knew that Negan planned to take away the man's husband from him and didn’t even have the guts to tell him about it yet?

Michonne appeared in the doorway, alone, and Rick was grateful beyond words when she took his hand and walked with him down the porch steps and off to find someplace to talk where they wouldn't be overheard. She knew something bad was up before even seeing him, just from Aaron telling her that he was there asking for her to come talk to him outside.

They ended up sitting in the neighbor's backyard gazebo, and she had waited patiently till Rick mustard the will to tell her what had happened, what the Saviors wanted, and what Negan was planning to do. Once he started talking it had only been too easy to tell her everything. She had sat and listened without commenting and without any judgement towards Rick until he was done, though her eyes reflected the same anger and horror that he had displayed when first learning about it all.

She considered what all he had told her heavily once he was finished and his head was hanging low. "He must suspect something's going to happen, or that something could happen, at least," she murmured. "They want us broken up so that we won't have the numbers or the will to rebel."

Rick's lips curled bitterly in a scowl. "We can't let him take those people."

Though they weren't runners, several of them had agreed to help in the fighting when the time came. They needed all the hands they could get, and if Negan swapped their people for some of his own it would truly be impossible.

"He plans to take them at the end of this week." Rick wanted to kick something out of frustration, the venom of his anger creeping into his voice. "We're so _close_. If he would have just waited another week-"

"So that's all we need to convince him of," Michonne suddenly interjected, looking far away as the wheels in her head rotated. "If we find a way to make him wait another week before taking our people, then we will win. We will have the numbers and guns by then and when he comes to collect, we can finally show our hand. We can fight, and we can keep our people. They've never had a better reason to fight than they will once they're told about this."

That much was true, Rick could only imagine the wrath of both Eric and Aaron once they learned of Negan’s plan to separate them. The others would be no different. He was certain of that. If Negan had tried to take Michonne... or one of his children...

Rick wouldn’t have waited to attack the man. He would have tried to kill him and Dwight both right at his dining room table, which would have doomed them all by bringing the rest of the Saviors down upon Alexandria when they had neither guns nor people, but Rick wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.

Negan was smart enough to know something like that, and Rick could assume fairly safely that that might have been the main reason his family had been spared. For now. That and the fact that it gave Negan something to hold over him, to yank on that choke chain around Rick's neck at any time by making him fear his family might be the next to be taken from him. At the same time, Negan was a damn fool. He didn’t even realize how badly he had just fucked up because he underestimated the bonds that rooted throughout Alexandria, transcending family ties till they were _all_ family. He underestimated it because he couldn’t understand it. It would be his downfall. Just like it had been back at Terminus with the cannibals that thought they could do as they wished with Rick's family; he was fucking with the wrong damn people.

Michonne's level voice pulled Rick out of his own head, her dark eyes resolute and assuring. "We're going to pull this off, no matter what he does in the end. We're the ones that survive. We will survive this too. We will just have to find something else to give him this week. Something he wants more than our people. Maybe tomorrow Aaron and I can find something worth giving him out on our runs instead. Maybe we'll get super lucky and find an old brewery so we can offer him that for all his people at the Sanctuary to drink up so that our job will be that much easier once we go up against them all." The lift of her voice and curve of her lips into a smile told Rick she was making a small joke to try to ease him.

Rick forced a sad little smile just to show he wasn’t giving up yet.

Michonne leaned in and kissed his brow, and he closed his eyes to better feel it, needing it so.

"We're gonna be ok," she promised him.

He nodded, agreeing like it was a deal they were making, though neither had any idea how they would uphold it.

When Michonne started to pull away he lifted his head, finding her lips and feeling the incredible softness against his own, taking it in like a drink of water in a desert. She didn’t pull back, pressing in closer instead like she was just as thirsty. They continued to kiss and though it remained soft brushes, it started building. Rick licked across her plush lips chastely and they parted eagerly, her tongue meeting his with equal desire. She tasted good, a hint of spice from whatever Aaron and Eric had had for supper. He hadn't even eaten yet. Her fingers moved from the back of his neck up into his hair and Rick's reservations were momentarily lost.

He leaned further against her, pulling her flush against him. Her smaller but incredibly fit body was solid and warm against his own and everything he needed right now. She went willingly, tangling her fingers into his hair even more tightly and pulling him over her as she relaxed back against the wall of the gazebo.

Rick's brain nearly short circuited when she wrapped her legs around his hips and pressed them together. It had been a while. Rick hadn't even tried to touch himself since Negan arrived. Even through the rough friction of their jeans, Michonne let out a soft moan against his lips and he nearly melted over her at the sweetness of that sound, rocking his hips just a bit. A gazebo wasn't ideal, but it wasn’t like they could take this back to either house right now. It was either time to stop or accept what they were fixing to do and just do it.

Rick broke the kiss just enough to get a gulp of air into his lungs, Michonne breathing hard underneath him too. It caused her body to naturally rock against his. Their eyes met, and even in the darkness of what had turned into nightfall, Rick could see the fire of desire there and the little hint of mischief in the smile she gave him.

No more reservations, Rick started the kiss up again with even more vigor, barely aware as her hands grabbed his shirt and pulled it up over his torso and head. He had no idea where she put it, and couldn’t care at all as he did the same to her own, thankful as she arched up from the wood to help him take it off her.

She shifted and laid down on the wooden seat where they were less visible, both of them finagling a bit around each other so Rick could slip her shirt under her back to save her from any splinters.

She giggled in appreciation as she caught on before kicking off her boots and socks behind his back.

Rick had to pull off so they could both slide out of their jeans. When he moved back in between her legs and held her against him he nearly groaned from the direct heat of their bodies.

She arched against him, strong legs drawing him right up against the course hairs over her cunt and Rick _did_ groan at the texture of it against the sensitive underside of his cock.

He kissed at her lips, her neck, her chin, anything he could possibly get at as he felt her heat open up around him and he pressed himself inside. She moaned low in her throat at the start of the intrusion, nearly forgetting where she was for a moment. Rick was gentle, but hurried given their exposure out here as he rocked forward to further encase himself into the tightness of her body that damn near felt hot enough to burn. She kept herself hushed after that first moan, making soft noises with each thrust in of his hips and she clung to him with her thighs and arms both.

It felt incredible as he became fully sheathed inside of her and she met each thrust with a roll of her wide hips that cradled him so perfectly. Rick had left her bra on her for how hurried they were, but he sorely wished he hadn’t as he felt her nipples hardening against his own chest from the rubbing friction even through the thin fabric of her bra.

Her walls were hot and wet and gripped around him naturally and he quickly started nearing his finish as he picked up the pace of his thrusts. The more her nails dug into his back and scalp the faster he drove them both and she was panting hard as sweat started to glisten her skin, wanting more.

Rick provided, grinding in tightly against her for a moment, reaching even deeper within and working her walls as he ran his teeth against the soft skin of her neck before sucking there, something primitive inside wanting to leave some little mark. Some little bit of proof on her that they were together in this form of intimacy. Nothing garish. Nothing that others would be able to clearly make out. He kept it near her shoulder, just a little mark they would both be able to see and smile over that she could still cover with most any shirt. The light welts on his back from her nails were the same thing. Some small and private evidence that would cause him to smile to himself with this memory for the next day.

She arched at the duel sensation and as he started thrusting firmly once more she clenched around him, both inside and out, and held onto him tightly as she pulsed and writhed through an orgasm. Rick nearly followed right behind, only barely able to wait til she was done before yanking himself out and reaching down to desperately palm himself, spilling onto the cement base of the gazebo for lack of a better option. He allowed himself just a moment to let his head rest against her shoulder, barely able to keep his weight braced over her with jelly arms and legs. It wasn't a for sure way to keep from having a baby right now at all, but at the moment they were without condoms so it was the only method they had. The Saviors had taken all those too in their first collection.

Assholes.

Michonne continued to embrace Rick, cradling him close afterwards even though they really needed to get dressed. They were lucky not to have gotten caught thus far with the Saviors still patrolling Alexandria fairly regularly throughout the day and night.

"We're going to win, this war" Michonne smiled.

"You can tell just from the sex?" Rick teased softly.

Michonne chucked, and the vibrations felt so comforting against him. "No. But I just know. First thing's first, we need to find something else he wants in order to convince Negan to leave our people with us at the end of the week. You've been stuck with him throughout the past few days... try to find something. I'll keep looking too. I can tell the other runners so that they keep a look out."

It was incredibly generous of her, being willing to relay the horrible news through the runners for him- sparing him from the fresh hell it would cause. Rick's voice was strained, however, head already going a thousand miles a minute with what she had said like their little rendezvous had counted for not.

"No. Give me a day before you tell anyone, please."

Her brows drew tight in confusion, but she eventually nodded her head in trusting agreement that he had a reason for asking for such a thing.

Rick could try to fix this. He could maybe protect them all without anyone ever having to know the danger their loved ones were currently facing. He could maybe spare them all of it.

After all, he knew something Negan wanted. The man had made it clear before, hadn't he?

Rick felt like the scum of the Earth, but he said nothing more to Michonne about it that night, continuing to hold her and praying she would still be able to stand to look at him after he did what he had to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rick has a proposition for Negan in the next chapter, but nothing comes easy when Negan is involved.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick's proposition doesn't go as he planned.

 

Rick felt like he was going to be sick as he climbed out of the shower the very next night. He had been riding on his last thin nerve all day, hardly sleeping a wink last night after he returned home and crawled into bed. His head had been too full, and his stomach had been too twisted, and his heart had been too heavy.

Nothing could make it through the sickening miasma of his thoughts as they swirled unendingly around the list Negan had made, the uncertain fates of his people, Michonne’s unshakable strength, and the knowledge of what was to come if he went through with the opportunity he had been given to save his people. Every so often his mind would also offer up one of the countless past wrongs the Saviors and Negan had afforded them, just to make it that much harder for Rick to muster up the determination to approach the man with a new deal.

A deal that could save his people. Save their rebellion. Save their chance at a future of freedom vs enslavement.

It had to be done.

_We’re the ones that get things done. We’re the ones who survive._

The night prior, Negan had already been locked up tight in Rick’s master bedroom by the time he had returned from Michonne. Maybe he had just assumed Rick would try to kill him in his sleep after telling him about the new arrangement.

Thankfully Negan hadn’t bothered going out much today, keeping to the house and going over various maps and papers that Gavin had compiled and delivered to him that morning, so Rick had been safe to not have to go around Alexandria either. He hadn’t been sought out for anything thankfully, most of Alexandria distracted by the truckload of vending machine spoils Aaron, Michonne and Rosita had brought to Alexandria that evening. Rick rejoiced in his heart when Gavin mentioned it to Negan, but Rick kept his celebrating to himself. A part of him longed to go out and see it with his own eyes, to see his friends and now that they were safe and sound as well, but…

He couldn’t stand the thought of showing his face even though he hadn’t done anything shameful, yet. He certainly couldn’t face Michonne. He prayed she could understand and forgive him afterwards, although he wouldn’t blame her if she couldn’t, but he would never be able to go through with this if he had to see her beforehand. He couldn’t even look at himself in the mirror as he toweled off or he would lose nerve for what he knew he had to do.

He had been trying to figure out the best way to go through with his plan throughout most of the day, and in the end he figured the direct way would be the least painful. Truth was, it was going to be painful no matter what.

He waited until well after it had turned dark to shower, and Negan had set himself up in the living room after the quietest and most tense supper of Rick’s life. Rick slipped into a fresh pair of jeans before he could even consider just going downstairs in the towel, and while it might have been a better idea in the long run, he gave a growl at the notion before continuing to get dressed. He didn’t care if he would just end up getting undressed again, he wouldn’t go to the man looking desperate and easy even if he technically was. Rick slipped on and buttoned a simple blue shirt to reaffirm the illusion to himself.

Dressed and cleaned up, he steeled himself and straightened his back before making his way on lead legs into his own living room, taking in the sight of Negan lounging on his favorite chair. Lucille was perched across from him on the couch, her barbs snagging the fabric. Negan was idly flipping through a coffee-table book about tropical fish that had been left in Rick’s house when he had first moved into it.

Rick cleared his throat sharply to gain the man’s attention.

Negan took his sweet time, giving a deep sigh like Rick had been clamoring for his attention all day or something and he was finally giving into it; making a real show of dog-ear-ing the page he was browsing through and closing the book as carefully as though it were made of glass before placing it just so on his lap before finally turning those hazel eyes up to Rick. His brow cocked expectantly. "Something you want?"

Rick’s scowl was plain on his face. He couldn’t really help it. Negan’s dicking around only made him all the more direct. "We both want something from each other. I'm here to negotiate for keeping my people."

Negan had the gall to look bored, tossing the book carelessly back onto the coffee table in front of him now. The heft of it made a **_bang_**.  "Told you already, it's non-negotiable. I've been giving you special treatment up to this point by leaving your people be- except the ones that royally pissed me off of course, like Daryl and Eugene, but they brought that on themselves. You think this is about you, Rick? It ain’t. Fucking with you is just an unavoidable bonus, but not the cause. Shit, even my own people go where they're best suited for. It works best for everyone that way. No one slacking, nobody having to carry someone else's weight. It's not supposed to be popular with the people, it's supposed to keep them all alive at the end of the day, and it does. The medicine might suck ass, but it keeps the patient from keeling the fuck over. It was only a matter of time before this needed to happen. It’s overdue, really, just going off the state you’re in trying to save them all by holding them above the waters while you drown. This is gonna save your ass too, Rick. I’ll take them onto my boat and you’ll finally be able to swim for yourself.”

“You’re actually trying to spin this to being for _my_ sake?” Rick growled incredulously.

Negan served Rick a wry smile, "To sort of paraphrase from this dick I know; maybe not today, not tomorrow... but I'm gonna save you, Rick. It's what I do."

"Let it be tomorrow then," Rick interjected, pulling the reins on the anger that simmered at Negan's twisting of his words that fateful night. "Not literally, of course. Instead of taking them this week, let it rest for as long as possible. A few months, a month, or even just another week. I'm asking you not to just rip everyone apart like this. Give them a fair chance to prove they can hold value by your own standards to stay here. Or at the very least, the chance to say good-bye to their loved ones before you do this to them all. Isn't that what’s better in the long run for everyone?"

"They had every chance before I got here if they could do what you excel at doing... which is getting me my shit," Negan opposed. “Shit, for that matter I gave them a chance just the other day to step up and go out on a run and your boy was the only one willing to put himself out there.”

Rick did his best to ignore the landmines Negan like to throw out there to try to trip him up or force him to divert from his path, though he did it with a hard scowl. "Just give them the chance to spend a little more time with their families then. Just delay it- please,” he tacked on desperately. “You could take the houses like you initially said-

"Don't need the houses this week."

“We could give you half our haul like normal then and-

“Don’t need that this week either- even if your people did pull in an ass-load of corn chips. We do need the labor though, and your people can give that. Besides, people get real squirrely when big changes like this are rolled out, extra time just creates a bigger risk for people to do something really stupid. Something stupid enough to get themselves killed. Like try to fight, or make a run for it.” Negan shifted his weight a bit in his seat, relaxed as if they were simply discussing the news. “What do you suppose would have to happen if I came to get all those people later and one wasn’t present and accounted for? You remember when those guns turned up missing from the armory lists? Course you do. So you remember what a real fuckin’ bummer that situation was. I’m not interested in sitting around again waiting for you to find me what’s mine because I’ll have to start killing some people if you don’t. It’s not a very fun time for either of us, Rick.”

Rick opened his mouth to interject, but Negan wasn’t done. He was never done.

“Besides, with me your people would at least be safe,” Negan mused, partially to himself. “Right now my people seem to have much better life-expectancy than those stuck with you, Rick. Seems every week you got someone else kickin’ the bucket on you. Just think of the kick in the balls it would be if in that extended time frame one of those listed died- Nancy, Joseph, Eric… any of them, and how that shit would haunt _you_ knowing that they would have lived if they had just been given to me when I asked for them. We both know it fuckin' would, Rick. How could you ask me to put that kind of burden on you?”

Rick was shaking with his anger towards the man, but he fought it. As hard as he fought for his life every day, he _fought_ it.

Rick only had one last thing to bargain with that Negan had ever expressed interest in. With the weight of the world pressing on his back he forced himself to speak through a gravelly voice. "You could have me instead."

Negan laughed mockingly. "You? I already have you. Whether you are at the Sanctuary or here, you are still mine."

Rick closed his eyes tightly like that would make any of this less hard. Less real. "I'm not talking about taking me back to your base."

When he opened his eyes again Negan wasn't laughing. Finally, he looked serious. He looked intrigued even, his eyes roaming over Rick like he was trying to gauge if there was any hidden meaning here other than the most obvious. He slowly stood up, though he kept his distance. "What exactly are you talking about then? Let's cut the bull."

Rick squared his shoulders and forced his voice to maintain its steadiness. "You told me to try you sometime. You expressed that you were interested." Rick nearly thought he would choke on his own words, but he managed to deliver them strong despite his inner disgust for the situation. "You could have _me_ instead of my people this week."

Negan was silent for just a moment, stare unchanged upon Rick as his words hung between them. Negan's tongue slid between his teeth, skimming along his lower lip slowly like he was savoring this moment, a shine of amusement in his eye.

After a moment of careful consideration during which Negan’s eyes roamed over Rick up and down like one might consider a jacket to try on, he finally met Rick’s blue eyes and let his tongue click against his teeth before disappearing inside his mouth to give a proper answer. "Nope."

Rick blanched once he realized what Negan had actually just said, too stunned to figure out right away if Negan was serious or not.

Negan's grin cracked wide over his face, but not because he was joking. He was laughing at Rick. Indeed, right behind that smile, laughter began to bark through the room like Rick himself was just the funniest joke ever told and Rick instantly flushed scarlet in horrified shame.

"Holy shit, Rick!" Negan continued to laugh, hands moving to rest on his hips like he might double over laughing at any moment. "I'll give you props for how big your balls swelled up for a moment there for you to even make the offer, but I'll have to pass."

Rick could hardly believe how badly he had miscalculated this. Negan had never seemed to lack interest in him before. The sexual jokes and too familiar contacts Negan always made with him were real according to the man in front of him. He had practically propositioned Rick that this could happen between them when they were in his bathroom seeing to Negan's cut hand. Now Rick was agreeing and suddenly Negan didn't want him? Had he just wanted the extra chance to humiliate Rick or had he simply over judged his own value by trying to barter with it?

Negan chuckled and shook his head as if he could read every single uncertainty that passed over Rick's face. "What's wrong now? That face you're pulling... like I just took a shit on your staircase. What did you think was gonna happen? You were gonna ride in here and play the hero by offering yourself as some blushing virgin sacrifice to the big bad wolf and I would just gobble you up snatch-first?" Negan laughed again, but this time it was a low scornful chuckle like Rick was the dumbest shit in the world.

Right now Rick felt like it, holding himself rigid and glare fixed despite every inch of him wanting to turn tail and run off because he was burning in a hellfire of humiliation.

"That's not how it works, you don't get to play _Saint Rick_ like this. Frankly, I’m a little offended. I deserve better then for you to be treating my dick like some cross you have to bear." Negan smirked with a puffing out of his chest. "Do you have any idea how many people would punch their best friend in the taint to be able to sleep with me? I'll give you a hint... a lot. I got a fucking waiting list of people that wanna replace any of my wives the second they step the fuck out of line." Negan crossed the room slowly as he spoke, coming to stand right in front of Rick, barely a breath separating them as he leaned in and filled Rick's every sense. "And in here you stroll like it would be the biggest sacrifice you've ever made. Fucking insulting, Rick. Honestly, I'm above it. And right now, I am so far above you that I could piss on you and you would think it was raining, but that is the closest to any freaky shit you would get from me tonight."

Rick wanted to sink into the deepest darkest hole and die. Actually, he wanted to hurl the man in front of him down one so _he_ could instead.

It must have shown in his eyes.

Negan tutted his tongue at him. "Don't get me wrong, Rick. It's not that I _wouldn't ever_. Hell, if you had come to me properly with this like my wives do, given me any indication that this was something you wanted and were willing for I'd have you bent over the back of that couch right now and you would be singing praises to my enormous fuckin' cock louder than a church choir! Hell, we would make a pair of rabbits look downright lazy with all the fuckin' we would be doin’! I would breed you right, fuck you until your legs were useless and couldn't hold your ass up for me anymore and then I  would drill you down into the carpet and show you exactly why they call it 'shag'. Then, if you asked for it sweetly enough, I would let you thank me for it by sitting you on my fuckin' lap and letting you show me just how much of a cowboy you really are. Reverse-position, preferably," Negan grinned with a salacious wink, "You got a pretty face but I get the impression from those ratty jeans of yours that you got an ass to match it." 

Rick just might pass out from how hot his face was, knowing that his whole body was flushed, still unsure if it was mostly embarrassment or anger.

Negan's smile lost its edge suddenly with a wistful shake of his head. "But that's not what this is, and I don't know if you've been paying attention, but I don't go for rape. What you're trying to offer me is so close to that that they practically carpool, because either way, we both know you don’t want it at all."

He wasn't wrong, but Rick hardly expected him to see it that way. No, he wasn't willing. He was _tolerating_. There was a difference, and Negan was rejecting him for it. _Wanting_ Negan, being _willing_... those were things Rick just didn't have in him after everything the man had done.

This plan of his had failed before it had ever begun.

Negan suddenly drew back from him, and it was like a snap in the air where the thick tension between them suddenly crumpled. Negan's tone was pleasant and casual when he opened his mouth again on his way back to his seat. "If that ever changes... Darlin',  _please_ hit me the fuck up! Shit, if that was the case, then maybe I could think about throwing you a goddamn bone, just to be a good sport about it. Maybe then we could talk deals on your people getting a little more time to boo-hoo and kiss each other good-bye. But it ain't that way yet, and we both know it. Until you can figure out a way to be willing for it, you got nothing I want."

Rick wanted with every fiber of his being to lay his hands on the insufferable man, but certainly not in the ways he was presently alluding to. What he wouldn’t give to beat the shit out of him. Repay him for just a fraction of the unbearable humiliation Rick was feeling.

Rick had to leave, or he was going to do something undoable, and likely risk one or more of his peoples’ lives in the process. Negan didn’t make so much as a peep as Rick turned and stormed from his own house, but he almost swore he could hear Negan's laughter following him into the night.

_"Fuck!"_ he roared when he was halfway down the street as the first wave of his anger rolled out of him with nothing to vent it upon. He didn’t swear hardly ever, but several days with Negan seemed to have rubbed off on him a little. Certainly the situation he found himself in seemed to call for it.

Someone's light switched on in their home, so Rick beelined off the street and through yards so no one would see him in such a state. For his sake and theirs. Lord only knew what he was liable to do right now, so agitated he could hardly think or see straight.

He didn’t know where to go, walking aimlessly for a while, cussing under his breath and kicking at random things around him once in a while. Control gone from him like it hadn’t been for a very long time.

Eventually, after an hour of frustrated stomping through everyone's yards, he found his way once more at Aaron's house. His subconscious seeking the only thing in the world that could comfort him through this. His focus became holding his daughter close.  

" _Rick_ -" Michonne's voice in the night hissing his name brought him up short of the porch. She must have been keeping watch, or heard him skulking around. She came around from the back of the house, sword on her back in case it had been a walker or a hostile person.

Rick couldn’t even meet her eye, dropping his head and cursing himself up one way and down the other for what a complete fool he had been to come here. He didn’t know what he had been thinking, and he shouldn’t be here now.

"What are you doing?" Michonne coaxed, worry in her voice for him.

He didn’t deserve her concern. "I- I wanted to hold my daughter," he confessed, feeling now that he said it that he didn’t even deserve that either. "I- I messed up," he confessed, voice shaking slightly as the anger slowly slipped from him like a balloon deflating. “I really messed up.”

Despite her frown of confusion, Michonne indicated the steps of Aaron's porch for them both to take a seat on.

Rick sank down onto the worn wooden step like his legs would give out on him, holding his head in his hands for a moment. "I thought I had something he wanted. I thought I could save everyone from what the Saviors were planning. But I was wrong, and I've never been so ashamed of myself in my life."

Her frown deepened with her confusion, but she placed a hand on his back. It was meant to be comforting, but it scorched Rick for the wrong he had done, especially to her. "What did you try to give him?" Her voice was low and level and Rick actually felt she already suspected. She was one of the most perceptive people he knew.

Rick felt uncharacteristically fragile as he found his voice. How many broken confessions had he heard in his time on the force? It sounded like that even to his own ears as he made his to Michonne. "You know how he is always acting around me? The way he looks and speaks to me. I called him on it the other day and he made it clear that it wasn’t just some fucked up play for dominance. He told me he was actually interested in me. Sexually."

The silence that hung in the air was thick and Rick knew Michonne was able to put the rest of it together on her own, but he owed it to her to say it all outright. "I would never _want_ to sneak around, or lie to you... but I just couldn’t bring myself to possibly say anything before hand, to you or anyone else. I felt I could bear the blame and shame afterwards, but if I saw it in your eyes before hand... I didn’t think I’d be able to go through with it if it gave us a chance to keep everyone together a little longer. Our people are worth more to me than my pride, however, so I-

"You felt you had to at least try," Michonne finished for him, her voice soft and far more understanding than he deserved. Her hand rubbed softly over his shoulder. “I know you did.”

Rick’s head only hung lower. “He- he rejected me, but still I- I’m so sorry.”

Her arms wrapped around him, pulling him against her to hold him. It was too kind.

Michonne said nothing for a little while, and Rick savored every moment in her arms with the fear that she would pull away at any moment. That she would come to her senses and storm into the house and leave him to rot in his own shame.

Finally, her voice reached him, level and full of the same practical wisdom she always had. “I would have tried too, if I had had the chance you had. For what’s at risk, I think any of us would have.”

Rick thought back to the way he had bit into the throat of the Claimer, of all things. He remembered Daryl afterwards telling him not to feel bad. Telling him that anyone would have done the same. Rick had rejected the lie meant to comfort him. ‘No,’ he had said, ‘Not _that_.’ They wouldn’t have done that. Gone that far. Done anything at all that it took to survive. 

He felt like he was living that moment with Daryl afterwards all over again.

“Did he say why he was rejecting you?” Michonne asked softly, the question surprising him for a moment.

Rick tried to recall through all the humiliation that had been flooding his mind and body at the time. “He uh- said he was offended at my approach or something. Told me he didn’t like how I was treating it like a burden. That I should come back and see him again if I ever found some way to _want_ it. He knows that will never happen though. I wouldn’t be able to pretend enough to convince him otherwise. He’s just too… _Negan_.” Rick growled, like it was the dirtiest thing he could think of to call the man. Maybe it was.

Michonne nodded along like she agreed with the use of the word, letting out a long sigh. That sigh was a signal to Rick that she had processed what she had been given and was looking for a way to move forward with it. He felt ridiculously let off the hook.

“We should probably see about-

“You don’t want to berate me for such a stupid plan? Even a little?” Rick broached, pulling back from her embrace.

Michonne’s brows drew, but not in anger. Her brown eyes were level on him. “Rick, we do what we need to do. That would have been far more than anyone could ask of you, but if your plan had worked… how could I have berated you for it? It makes even less sense to do so now when nothing even happened. It doesn’t look like it cost us anything by it failing either, with is rare with plans we make now a days. Things aren’t like they were before. Including relationships, you know that. I’m not going to slash your tiers and burn your clothes for trying to use one of the last resources available to save us.”

Rick wanted so badly to kiss her, and though she gave him no indication that she would reject it, he couldn’t begin to muster up the nerve for it. Regardless of how pragmatic she was about it, he still felt a kiss would be pushing it too much after what he had almost done.

“We’ll find another way,” Michonne sighed, pulling him back into her arms. “We’ll find something else for him. He won't take our people from us.”

Rick heard the uncertain waver of her voice there for the first time since all this had started.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her even tighter, feeling the unspoken shift between them as it turned from her comforting him to the other way around.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter Regan smut WILL happen, even if you're not sure how yet.   
> Have faith.   
> Please review and kudos if you're still out there.   
> This story takes a few risks and I'm sure I've lost some people along the way.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: Hate-fucking, violent sex.  
> smut chapters are the longest chapters to write, but I wanted this one to be right before I posted it.

****

 

Rick had watched with thinly contained fury as more Saviors rolled into the gates of Alexandria. They were there to ‘provide extra protection to those being transported to their new homes’ the following morning, according to Negan. They all knew what the truth of the matter was, why they came in with guns and started going around to the houses of those listed to check that they were there and remind them to be fully packed and ready to go by noon tomorrow.

After his failed attempt to stop this from happening, Michonne had broke the news to Aaron and Rosita, and they had spread far and wide yesterday trying to find something, anything to barter with. They had come up empty.

Today Rosita and Michonne were still out, but Aaron hadn’t been able to tear himself from Eric’s side, the chance that this might be their last day together forcing them to cling to each other.

Rick had watched from the street with fists clenched and itching to be swung as Gary leaned in the doorway of Aaron and Eric’s house with a lazy smile and a hand on the butt of his pistol as he ‘made sure they were getting everything in order’.

Rick saw the lost and tearful look in Eric’s eyes. He saw the brink of desperation on Aaron’s face. How many times had he made that face himself when he thought he was about to lose someone? It was probably on his face now, actually. Every cell in him told him to fight. To kill.

To _protect_.

Anything that would stop this madness.

Aaron’s eyes met his from inside his doorway and they said the same thing, that same desperate need to protect and fight, but there was a cage around the beast inside him, and he could do neither.

Rick couldn’t either.

Two lions caged, and wanting only to maul the ringmaster of this circus from hell.

Rick couldn’t stand another minute of it, turning and making his way back down the street towards his house. _Just pacing your cage_ , his mind offered up traitorously.

The hell he was. Rick looked at no one as he moved, focused and driven, body guided by the rage coursing through him, demanding the one outlet he really wanted.

 _So what_ if it was stupid. _So what_ if it got him killed. They were all dead anyway without their people here to help bring an end to all of this. His decision had been made for him.

He was going to maim the ringmaster.

He would take any piece out of him that he could. A chunk- a nibble- a scratch; it didn’t fucking matter.

He scaled his porch steps two at a time, driven by the single-minded fury burning within him, shoving through the front door so hard it sounded like gunfire as it slammed against the wall and put a hole in the wake of the knob. “ **Negan**!” Rick bellowed, his voice laced with pure furry. Drenched in it.

The floorboards creaked above him, the sound of weight being hesitantly shifted overhead. There was a pause following that told Rick the man wasn’t coming down to answer him because of whatever had been in his voice just then.

Rick charged up the staircase, hearing the threat in his own footfalls as his boots stomped up the stairs. His bedroom door had been closed save for a crack, and Rick heedlessly- perhaps foolishly in hindsight- burst into the main bedroom. He found Negan standing there, just reaching for Lucille.

Their eyes instantly locked upon each other. Rick’s were murderous. Negan recognized that instantly and there was a hard guardedness in his own that promised to fight back and kill Rick if it came to that.  

As his held Rick’s furious gaze he grabbed hold of the bat, but that stare remained level. His tone was almost casual despite the malice circling in the room and thickening the air till it nearly crackled between them like electricity.

“Damn Rick… keep it down; some of the neighbors might hear. What would they think if they knew we fought?” He took in Rick’s stance seriously despite his flippancy, knowing the gravity of the situation that had been escalating all week and had finally come to a head. He cocked a brow mockingly despite the seriousness in those hazel eyes. “Is this the part of the story where Moses demands ‘let my people go’ to the king one more time before he fills the river with blood?”

Ignoring the slight discrepancies in his Moses reference, Rick shook his head, nails biting into his own hands for how hard they were clenched.  “We’re past me asking, Negan.”

The tension in those broad shoulders thickened a little bit, readying for a fight. His hand choked up a bit on Lucille. “Is that right? Just how far past that are we then, _Prick_? Because while you have made it abundantly clear to me in the past that you have no issues mowing down ass-loads of my men, I’ll remind you that there is a small ass-load out there right now, and if you came here to do something really stupid then you gotta know what will happen next. They will kill you and probably a little ass load of your own people. After that- fuck, who can say? Maybe they would level this whole place for the sake of avenging me. Maybe they’ll just enslave everyone outright. Who could say what would become of your kids then, Prick.”

Rick’s anger snapped then at Negan’s last remark. Not in an explosive way. It was so much worse than that. It snapped to something much calmer. Much more dangerous. His anger reached a point inside of him long buried and dragging it out to the surface. The monster in him finally uncaged. It had been a long time since his monster last came out into the light of day. The last time, he had torn into another man’s throat with his teeth and torn him open just the same as any walker would have. He had calmly informed Michonne with a face covered in blood that the man who had tried to force himself on Carl was his to kill, and he had done so with no small amount of satisfaction.

The monstrous part of him had stirred again when Negan killed his friends long enough to allow Rick to make a calm and chilling declaration of killing the man one day. Negan had seen the hint of it in Rick’s eyes looking out at him… and he had stomped it down then and there before it could come out.

A fool might have thought he was backing off a bit, but Negan wasn’t a fool, and his fist went white-knuckled on his bat as he watched the change in Rick as it happened now.

Rick’s face smoothed of its ire, and his voice dropped the fires and chilled down into something icy. “Yeah- yeah I came here to do something _very_ stupid. But what you just said is not how this is all going to end today if your word from before means jack shit,” Rick informed him coolly. “You told me if the day ever came that I genuinely wanted you, to come try you. And then we could talk about you sparing the others.”

There was a strained moment of disbelief like Negan had been hit square between the eyes and just hadn’t yet realized he had been KO’d. A scoffing laugh escaped him before he was able to help it. “You can’t be fuckin’ serious. You’re peddlin’ some major league BS, Rick… and I ain’t buying it.”

Rick stepped closer, slowly. Stalking the larger man. For once invading Negan’s space. Negan’s hackles were up, but he didn’t back away. Didn’t back down. Rick assured him flatly. “Oh, I’m dead serious.”

He cocked his arm back and swung a fist hard square into Negan’s jaw, pain exploding down his wrist from the force but burning through his arm in satisfaction as the man reeled back, eyes blazing with incredulous anger and shock.

As Negan pulled himself up again and glared down at him menacingly, Rick felt ready to take on whatever the man threw back at him. Shockingly, Negan didn’t bring up Lucille to crack open his skull. He didn’t throw a punch back. He _hesitated_.

There was something else in his hazel eyes now as he glared down at Rick, face red with fury and pain from the punch. Rick saw it there like they were a mirror of his own blue ones. The monster inside Negan looking back at him. Seeing him, recognizing this twisted hidden part of him.

And Negan _hesitated_ , unafraid, but uncertain. If this monster in Rick meant to kill him, he wouldn’t have just thrown a punch and then given the man a moment to respond. Negan’s inner monster recognized that. Pissed off or not, he was clearly trying to calculate exactly what was happening between them here.

Rick’s voice retained that colder-than-ice rage as a joyless smirk pulled at his lip. “You told me to come to you about my people again if I ever found some way of wanting you. Fine, I’ll admit, I want you all right. More than I want anything else in this world. I want you- between my teeth. I want your flesh and blood clogging the bottom of my nails. I want to use both to tear the skin off of you. I want to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze and squeeze. I want to make you feel what it is that you make me feel, Negan, every bit of it. The pain, the humiliation, the objectification. I want nothing more in this world than to make you feel it all.”

It was true, spoken like gospel and ringing twice as clear. Rick had never meant anything so deeply as those words in that moment. He wanted to give that pain to Negan. He would damn near give anything else up to be able to do so.

Negan couldn’t have looked more stunned. Recovery came quickly for him, however, both mentally and physically in the situation as his lips stretched out into a manic grin and he chuckled like there was any humor at all to be had here. “That’s what you want from me, Baby? That’s what you’re so damn thirsty for?”

The hand not holding the bat slammed into Rick’s temple, catching him by surprise with the speed of the larger man and nearly knocking him off balance as his ears rang with the pounding of his head. Still, he managed to hear Negan over the noise. “Drink up then, Prick!”

Rick wouldn’t stand a chance with them both on equal footing for the man’s bulk and size advantage, so he resolved to take him down to his level, throwing himself forward into a low tackle around Negan’s waist and forcing him back. Negan lost his footing and crashed against the side of the bed that had been brought in for himself, sliding it a few feet to the side as Rick took advantage and tried to pin down the man’s legs with his own before throwing another fist across Negan’s red face.

Pain stung its way through Rick’s scalp and he realized with audacity that Negan had grabbed his hair. Not that his first punch had been very fair… but hairpulling? He swung again as his head was pulled back and he went with it- his back hitting the floor between Negan’s legs with a hard thump of his spine.

Somewhere in the room was the noise of Lucille clattering against the floor next to them, and then the scratch of her barbs as she was purposefully pushed further away somewhere by Negan who had deemed her unnecessary after all.

Negan leaned forward, curling over him and grabbing for his wrists to keep Rick from swinging again. As Rick wriggled to avoid Negan's grip, their pelvises became lined up and between the rough pressure against him and the immense satisfaction and thrill of having finally been able to hurt the man that had been hurting him so much in return... Rick was hard.

Not throbbing, or raging, but decently hard, and it was clear in those dark hazel eyes the moment Negan noticed it.

His pause at having realized it gave Rick the chance to slug him across the face yet again, a mad and ugly smile starting to pull at his own lips just a little. The expression juxtaposed so greatly to the situation, but Rick couldn’t help it. It was such a deep satisfaction at this point to hit Negan that doing so was a damn _pleasure_.

The way Negan looked at him right after, not angry or scared, but critical. He was seeing and reading something from Rick that only he could pick out and recognize, and Rick felt it between their bodies when the man shuddered at whatever it was he saw. "Goddamn, there he is..." Negan breathed in low awe, "You finally gonna let that thing that's in you come out to play, Ricky-boy? Do I get to see the Boogieman that killed so many of my men in cold blood?"

Rick answered with a mean headbutt, Negan reeling back with a curse. Rick used the chance to flip the man off of him to the side, clambering over Negan's bulk to take the advantage as he pinned the man to the floor and reached for his neck. His fingers ached to squeeze it so.

Negan let out a crack of laughter like it was so damn amusing, as if they really were playing, before reaching up to grab Rick's own neck. His arms were longer, and he used that to his advantage to hold Rick far enough above him that he couldn't grab Negan's neck properly to strangle him. Currently he was doing a descent job of strangling himself as he tried to get closer and failed. That big hand wasn’t about to let him pull back either, however, keeping Rick pinned atop him.

Negan's free hand grabbed Rick's shirt at his ribs to keep him further in place and Rick's entire focus was stunted for a moment when Negan's powerful hips surged and rolled where Rick straddled him- not trying to throw him off. Something else entirely. Something far more insane.

If the move hadn’t been suggestive enough, Rick could feel Negan starting to harden beneath him, and that brought his awareness back to the fact that he was himself hard still as well.

Negan's gaze was dark, something very wicked in his eyes as he smirked up at him challengingly. "What are you gonna do now, huh? The fuck you gonna do now, Beautiful?"

A similar question from his past jolted through Rick’s mind and right then his body was burning in the flames- it was so on fire- driven by instinct and dark desire to hurt, to maim. It was purely animal how he shuddered when Negan's hand tightened around his neck and the man rolled his hips up against him again.

Rick stopped reaching for the man's neck and turned his hands to the arm holding him aloft to dig his nails into the skin of it. This time when Negan's hips rolled forward Rick's instinctively rolled back as everything became confusing and simple at the same time.

What they both wanted was very simple. The fact that they wanted it was what was so damn confusing.

Negan's hand tightened even harder, cutting Rick's air off as those dark eyes shined back with Negan's own monster lurking in the shadows, also ready to come out.

No official word was given, no verbal agreements or promises made. It was pure primal instinct and it was at the same second that the monsters finally came out to play with each other.

Rick tore his nails down Negan's arm hard enough to draw blood even as he bucked his hips over the man's growing erection.

Negan growled through the pain as his hand loosened just enough on Rick's neck to allow him to gasp for just a little air once more as his head started to spin. He rocked his hips steadily under Rick as he clawed down the front of Rick's shirt roughly, ripping a few buttons to open it up.

With more skin exposed, Negan repeated the clawing act down the front of Rick's chest, leaving tracks of red welts in retribution. Rick hissed and arched at the sting burning him all the way from his collar bones to navel.

He followed Negan's lead, letting go of that strong arm of his to dive his own hands under Negan's T-shirt and dig into the hot skin there. He clawed desperately with the need for air- for Negan to release his neck- till blood was drawn and the tracks Rick made grew slick with the first droplets of it.

Negan hissed in pain and finally let go of Rick's neck so he could push himself up from laying on the floor to sitting. Rick slid down into his lap and curled his legs around Negan to keep himself upright and close. He wasn’t going to let the man get away from any of the pain he had yet to inflict upon him.

Doing so only brought their bodies closer together at the same time. The heat between them was a fire, and both were red and sweat-slicked already from adrenaline and pain. As Rick’s bulge came to rest over Negan’s own stiffness, he couldn’t deny some of the redness and sweat was also partially from some twisted shared desire for what was happening here.

Rick followed the impulse to nail the infuriating man across the face once more with his fist as Negan grinned up at him, his lip splitting from the impact. His grin only widened for Rick’s effort, making him look deranged as the smile pulled at his torn lip even more and he brought up a hand to smear the blood across his jaw in a poor attempt to wipe it away- or maybe just feel it- before he backhanded Rick hard across the face.

Rick reeled from the strike that caused his vision to blur around the edges and made his head throb again, but remained in the man’s lap for his legs still wrapped around his waist. Negan shrugged his jacket off, letting it pool on the floor behind himself as Rick recovered from the blow.

He gripped Rick’s hips with bruising force, pulling him closer, rubbing the rough fabric of their jeans frustratingly between the hardness of their cocks. Rick hissed and threw his head back as if it pained him, but it didn’t. It really didn’t. Negan growled beneath him in frenzied lust and frustration. Rick brought his focus back to the man he was entangled with, and when Rick saw the first little beads of red start to show through the white fabric of the man's shirt from where he had scratched him open Rick's excitement only grew and a pleased little noise escaped the back of his throat.

Negan gave him a punch in the ribs that nearly stole his breath away in reprimand, but it was clear through their jeans rubbing against each other that the thrill of it was shared. Rick retaliated with a sharp slap to the side of the man’s sinewy neck, letting his nails trail from there down the fabric of the man’s shirt. The cotton kept him from scratching as he liked, and although he liked the sight of blood he had drawn painting the white of it, he wanted more skin available for him to rip and bite at, reaching down and yanking Negan’s shirt up roughly with impatience.

Negan's hands became busy with Rick's belt and pants, torn away only long enough for him to lift his arms to allow the shirt to be pulled from himself and tossed.

Both were panting, sore and dizzy and drunk on the violence both given and received thus far. Neither man was about to stop and rationalize this right now. It was something deeper than logic, purely carnal in its rawest form. The second that Negan’s upper body was bare to him Rick’s eyes roamed over the span of flesh just waiting to be carved up by him. The hair covering Negan’s chest and slipping down into his pants was dark and thicker than anything on Rick’s own body. There were already scars on him.

Rick couldn’t help it as he paused for just a moment to take them in, nearly passive as Negan yanked his own ruined shirt back off of him. Rick could see some were fresh enough even in their healed state to have been within the last couple years. Most of them were older. Much older. He traced over what looked to be an old one on Negan’s left shoulder that trailed down to mar some faded tattoo ink there. A razor maybe?  

Negan’s hand on him nearly went unnoticed until the man prodded lightly at the gunshot wound Rick sported on his own chest. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised someone has tried to kill you before. You were a cock-sucker before all this too, weren’t ya?”

Rick slapped Negan’s hand away bitterly before returning his own hand to Negan’s scar. This time he wasn’t gentle. This time he grabbed Negan’s shoulder hard and lunged forward to force the man to fall back, sliding from the side of the bed down onto the ground with Rick overtop of him. Rick allowed the momentum to carry him right into Negan’s shoulder where he bit down hard. Whatever that scar was, Rick was going to make it a forgotten memory in place of the new one he would give the man. Negan gasped and growled between his teeth, but he didn’t cry out.

Something about that pissed Rick off, and he bit harder, worrying the flesh till it finally broke and the taste of copper hit his tongue hard. Only then did Negan give the first cry of pain- half restrained though it still was.

“Fuck! Fuckin’ Prick! Fuckin’ snappy lil’ son of a- Aaaaargh! Fuck!”

The blow that caught Rick on the side of the head and dislodged him made his vision go from red to blurred. He shook his head a bit to try to clear it, but Negan’s hand was back in his hair and he was yanked back by it so his throat was bared to the other man.

Negan pulled Rick back and off balance enough to roll him off of himself, Rick growling in frustrated pain as he found himself hauled first onto the floor once more and then up by his strands onto shaky legs as Negan rose up next to him, dragging him along. Once up, Negan drove his shoulder hard into Rick's chest, knocking the breath out of him as he tackled him down onto the mattress.

The silken grey sheets that had been brought in for him felt so at odds with the brutality of everything else so far that it threw Rick for a moment, the sweat of his back sliding on the silk softly, almost sensually as he coughed harshly in desperation to pull air back into his lungs.

Negan pushed himself up off of him thankfully, giving Rick a better chance to breathe for a moment without the man’s weight crushing him. Rick was hardly able to focus, but was somehow still all too keenly aware of it as Negan unfastened his belt and let his pants drop, leaving him in just a pair of tight black briefs.

Rick managed to catch his breath at last, blue eyes fixing so hard upon Negan as the man returned and reached for the fasten of Rick's jeans that it actually gave the man pause. Those large hands stilled over his button and zipper despite the beastly way he continued to stare down at Rick like he meant to devour him.

His voice was deep and nearly choked when he spoke then, words as careful as his hands as he slowly popped the button of Rick's jeans. He handled him like one might handle a cobra- or any number of dangerous animal. He was wise to do so at that moment. "If this needs to stop- If you want it to stop, you tell me no, Rick. Right now. Tell me no. Nothing bad will happen if you do that, regardless of this shit," he assured him with an indication towards the blood and fresh wounds on his skin.

Rick knew he would be bruised black and blue from what had already been dealt him, but Negan hadn't drawn any blood yet.

He didn’t come this far to just give up now. His people needed him.

 _And I need this_ , some monstrous little voice cried out inside of him. _Need to make Negan bleed. Need to make him hurt. Need to- to..._

 _I want him like this_ , that same voice growled. _I could never dare have anyone else like this._

God no, he could never have anything like this with Michonne. He would never in a billion years have any desire to do this wretched thing to her. To let loose his monster upon her. He wouldn’t want to. With Negan… he _wanted_ to. He wanted to so badly.

That deep and dark desire spread out from within him, and he was reaching for Negan before he could realize it was his own hand doing so. His stare burned into the hazel one locked upon him as he took the man's jaw in a crushing grip no kinder than the way Negan had grabbed him in that damned clearing before. Rick pulled him down close enough for his dark whisper to be heard clearly between them. "If you stop right now, I'll kill you before you ever get a chance to step foot outside of this house."

It was a fucking promise.

If Negan refused this time, that was it, game over- Alexandria loses her people and with it her chance at freedom. Rick would outright kill him if that was what was doomed to happen. He needed to make this exchange with the man, and this savagery being shared was the only way Rick could genuinely want it to be between them.

That part of him, however, oh... wanted it badly. So badly. Negan stood before him sporting blood Rick had drawn, and he had never looked so good.

Rick's cock throbbed at the thought of drawing so much more. The act that would have normally cost him the lives of his people was wholly forgivable here and now in this one way.

Negan held his gaze unbroken despite the small shudder his body gave. Whether it was in fear or -more likely- some perverse and wild excitement, Rick would never know for sure.

Negan ripped his pants down from his hips damn near violently. Rick kicked him for his efforts as he straightened out his legs enough for the man to succeed in removing both the pants and his boots from him. Negan gave a soft grunt when Rick got him in the gut, but his focus was intensely upon the bulge straining Rick’s classic tight-whites like the pain didn’t matter in the least in that moment. He wasn’t nearly as nice then as he had been with the pants as he grabbed Rick’s underwear and started ripping them from his hips. They dug painfully into Rick’s sack for a moment before the band gave way and the fabric went with it, a pained growl was pried out from Rick’s clenched jaw.

Then he was exposed. Completely. Utterly.

Negan saw all of him, inside and out, and his eyes held a frenzy of awe and hunger for both the man and the monster within.

Negan made a low and appreciative whistle as his eyes roamed over Rick’s stiff cock jutting out from his hips. “Jesus, no wonder you’re always trying to play ‘my dick is bigger than yours’ with me. You got more monsters than I assumed, Darlin’.”

Rick was glad he was already red from the fight so he couldn’t color at Negan’s words. He glanced down towards the man’s own bulge skeptically. “You seem really shocked to see a big one. Is it a new sight for you? Am I about to be disappointed?”

Negan’s grin only turned sharper, but his stance was assured as he dropped his own briefs to release his own cock, palming the thickness of it for Rick to see that even in Negan’s large hands it still filled the palm very nicely. For just a moment Rick hesitated, not disappointed, but wondering how it was going to fit, worried for the foreignness of what was about to happen.

“Turn over and bite a pillow, Rick, because I’m gonna have you screaming praises to my cock just like I promised you before.”

“Fuck that,” Rick growled back. Unwilling to turn away as though he were scared. “You’ll look me in the fuckin’ eye, Negan.”

Negan actually chuckled low at that, pleased; like he had been hoping Rick might feel that way. “Figured you’d wanna close your eyes and think of England, but that works for me.”

Negan fished a little bottle of lube out of his jacket on the floor before he climbed onto the bed between Rick’s ankles, the mattress sinking low under his knees.

He moved slowly, still careful in his approach as Rick watched his every move through dark and wary eyes. Rick felt the heat from his body before the skin came up against his own. The second the contact was made between them Negan’s size was all too apparent and smothering. He was a beast of a man even on a good day, and Rick shivered anxiously as the man moved overtop of him and began to pin him down. His hips forced Rick’s thighs to spread wider, his broad chest and neck filling Rick’s sight. His cock was hot even against Rick’s own as they came into contact. While the slide of soft skin over hard flesh was pleasurable enough to draw a breath out of him, Rick was a bit overwhelmed as Negan’s large hand started to encircle his neck once again to push him back against the mattress. He was quickly losing control of this to the man above him.

Rick kicked his knee hard into Negan’s side, winding the man momentarily and making him cringe back. Rick gave him a hard shove to the side, Negan shooting him a glare as he clutched his own side. As if it had hurt that much.

“No. You can top, but I’ll be on top. Give me the fuckin’ lube.”

Negan’s eyes lit up with new lust and his scowl was pulled up into a smirk around the corners. He shoved the lube into Rick’s hand as he rolled onto his side off of him. “Never been ridden by an actual cowboy before,” he mused to himself. He rolled onto his back as Rick sat up, and with this new position, his cock laying heavy and thick upon his lower stomach, it looked even bigger than it had before. “Saddle up, Rick,” he invited with a dark chuckle.

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth,” Rick growled, trying to ignore the man for a moment while he shifted to his knees and coated a few fingers with the proffered lube.

Negan surprised him by actually going quiet, but it was largely because his focus was zeroing in intensely upon Rick’s antics as he shifted over the man to straddle his hips and reached back to start opening himself up.

It was hurried, and about need over pleasure, Rick grimacing as the lube fought against the tightness of his body. He tried to force himself to relax paradoxically.

Negan only watched his struggle for a minute before he seemed unable to allow Rick to do so any longer, both their erections flagging from the pain Rick’s stubbornness was causing him. “Hand me the lube, Sugar. You’re just gonna tear yourself at this rate and I got big plans that won’t count for shit if you do that.”

Rick shook his head stubbornly, refusing, but Negan sat up and reached around him to grip his wrist, stilling it. He was far more man than he was monster in that moment as he looked up at Rick with chastising concern, giving Rick a glimpse of what Carl had tried to tell him before. “I’ll get you there, Darlin’, and I’ll make it feel good. I told you before, you’re not going to fuckin’ punish yourself on my cock. I’m tired of watching you literally beat yourself up trying to make it happen. Let me get you open, and then you can go back to biting the fuck out of me if you want.”

Rick didn’t laugh. It wasn’t a joke. Negan meant it. Something in his eyes said he wanted it too.

Rick handed over the lube.

Negan was quick to slick up a few fingers, using more than Rick had on his own, keeping the lube close in case even more was needed. He first swiped a few of his lubed fingers over Rick’s cock, greasing it enough for his other hand to wrap around it and slide over the shaft firmly as he reached back behind Rick with the lubed one. Rick’s attention was shifted to his cock as it was stroked and cradled till it was brought back to full life once more.

He rocked his hips over Negan a bit, rutting against the slide of the firm grip upon him.

“That’s it, Cowboy,” Negan murmured approvingly. “Fuck into the hand that feeds. Fuckin’ beautiful.”

Rick took the encouragement, body heating once more as he moved his hips and felt the pleasure curling around the base of his balls and spreading throughout his body. Negan’s own cock was filling out once more just beneath his own, and Rick drove himself down against it till Negan got the hint and gripped them both together in his big hand.

It was so much better that way, the heat and the slide of it, Rick didn’t even care at first when Negan’s other hand started to prod at his asshole because he was so amazed by the pleasurable feel of the hot cock against his own. Negan’s own breathing started to kick up beneath him as well, and Rick watched transfixed as their cocks moved with and against each other in the man’s hand at the same time.

When the first finger of Negan’s penetrated him it didn’t hurt at all because of the clumsy attempts Rick had made to stretch himself already, sliding in and moving easily with the rhythm they had established. It only added onto the pleasure that Rick was feeling, foreign though it was, and soon he found himself rocking back as eagerly as he was rocking forward, sliding himself forward into the hot grip of Negan’s hand and impaling himself backward upon the man’s finger.

Negan’s cock only throbbed and wept against his own as the man watched him do so hungrily, that sinful tongue of his running out across his busted lips once more.

Seeing that tongue running over his own blood made Rick want to bring out more upon him, picking out another old scar on Negan’s bared chest just under his left nipple before he reached out and clawed savagely across it, hitting the nipple too and making the man under him hiss through his teeth at the burn as blood beaded along the scratches.

The fingers sliding easily into Rick now drove in hard, and Negan worked in a third finger to join them despite the initial protesting tightness of Rick’s body.

Something wicked danced in those hazel eyes, gleeful to be paying Rick back for every blow dealt him in this way. Rick rocked harder atop the man, proving that he wasn’t afraid to play this game with him. He gripped Negan’s injured shoulder, feeling the welted flesh and slick blood beneath his palm and squeezing as hard as he could as he rubbed against Negan in the man’s hand. He wanted to hear from the bigger man how it hurt. Just as he made Rick hurt so many goddamn times.

Negan grit his teeth at first, but then Rick dug his fingers into it too and squeezed until his hand shook slightly and at last Rick was rewarded with a cry that went straight to his cock.

Negan ripped his fingers out of him, slapping Rick relatively lightly but firmly across the face with the very hand that had just been working into him. The point was made with the hand he had used more so than the infliction of pain. “Mean fucker,” he spat petulantly.

Rick actually smiled in response. “Oh but you make the best sounds, baby,” Rick tossed back at him, trying out some of the mockery that Negan liked to pull on him at the worst of times.

The glare Negan shot him made him see the fun in it for once.

“Let’s see what sounds _you_ make then, Darlin’,” Negan returned, done with playing nice. He lined himself up and let go of Rick’s cock to reach up to fist the man’s curls tightly once more, using them to keep Rick fairly immobile as he pushed his hips up and Rick’s body parted around the blunt stab of his cock.

Rick made a truly interesting cry of pain and… something else. There was certainly a sharp discomfort in the final stretch as Negan filled him like he had never been filled before, but there was also a strangely satisfying feeling of fullness to be had in it. that feeling faded as Negan pulled out, leaving behind just the sting once more, but then he drove back up, even deeper this time and Rick felt him brush over something deep within that had his spine arching and blue eyes blowing wide.

Negan saw it on his face, chuckling deeply, knowingly. “There now, look how nice and mellow you get once you get an ass-load of dick inside you? That was all you needed this whole time, wasn’t it, Saint Rick? Baby, feel me fucking deliver. It. To. You.” He punctuated each word with a hard thrust up that had Rick seeing stars and his jaw parted to allow a few more interesting noises to escape.

He couldn’t help it, and right then he didn’t care, rocking back after he caught on to the man’s hard rhythm till their bodies were slapping against each other where they were joined, brutal with each other even in this.

Negan’s own head kicked back against the mattress as well as deep groans escaped him, still driving his hips up into Rick as a punishing pace. They wouldn’t last long, but it wasn’t a marathon. It was a fight.

Doing so bared his neck, and Rick lunged forward, ripping a few hairs out of his own head as he jerked from the man’s grip. His jaw closed over Negan’s throat in dark instinct and he-

He hesitated.

He _hesitated_ , and for a moment their bodies stilled against each other, Negan’s groans died in his trapped throat. Rick knew with absolute certainty that Negan knew he could do it. The question was if he would.

Rick started to bite down a little, feeling the skin, the monster in him remembering how easily it would tear if he really put his mind to it. Negan’s hand on the back of his head had him stilling once more in his bite. The hand that had just been yanking on his hair was now soft as it swept into the curls, petting into them. “I won’t give you another shot, Rick,” he promised him, whispering almost like a lover might. “Now or never.”

Rick’s jaw tightened just a little bit more, but with a growl he forced himself to jerk back, teeth scraping harshly but ultimately painlessly from the man’s neck. _Not yet_ , he told himself.

The promise hardly quelled his frustrations, however, and he sat back upon Negan and rode down upon him harder than he ever should have dared. He knew he would be the one really paying for it later, but right now it was the best he could do to pay Negan back for the hell this week had been, as well as give himself some repayment through the pleasure he took from him.

Negan’s teeth grit in a cross between pleasure and pain as both mounted, but ultimately pleasure was winning out as Rick worked him up with his harsh riding and brought them both to the brink of orgasm. Rick just needed a little more.

His eyes locked back on the skin of Negan’s neck that he had just shown mercy too, and he decided to give himself a consolation prize as he leaned forward once more, still riding as he wrapped one of his hands around the man’s neck, cutting his oxygen as well as bracing himself better as he bounced upon the thick cock.

The only thing that stopped him from using both hands to strangle the man was the fact that he wanted to cum, and started stoking at himself with his free hand to do so. Negan made no move to dislodge his hand, throwing his head back just a little more in fact to better feel it as his own hands dug hard into Rick’s hips to bounce him even faster upon his cock. They were going to leave bruises all over him for sure.

Rick couldn’t help it, and as the first choked sounds left Negan his cock pulsed in his hand and his orgasm hit him hard. Harder than he could remember in a long time as he spurted all over the man’s stomach and chest, watching his cum get caught up in the man’s dark chest hair.

Negan let out a strangled shout and Rick gasped at the feel of the cock throbbing inside of him. Any thought of pulling off the man was crushed as those powerful hands tightened upon his hips until he cried out in pain from them, keeping him trapped firmly in place upon Negan’s hips, the man balls deep as his orgasm was released deep inside of him. As deep as the man could get.

He didn’t let go of Rick until his cock was fully spent of its seed, hands falling limp on either side of him as he finally released Rick.

Rick paid him the same curtesy of letting him go, and Negan took in a ragged breath like he had just been saved from drowning as Rick pulled off and collapsed onto the sheets next to him for a moment to catch his own breath.

There was a silence between them for a few blissful moments, save for their panting and Negan rubbing at his neck like it pained him to do so. It probably did. Rick could already see the bruises left there from his hand.

 _Good_.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Negan breathed, turning onto his side with great effort to face him. That awe and appreciation and just raw _understanding_ was back in his hazel eyes. Rick turned his head to meet them fully, unused to seeing such a look.

Negan moved closer, leaning in, and the moment Rick realized he meant to kiss him it was like a bucket of ice water had been tossed over him.

“No!” He jerked back, stare incredulous and expression unbelieving at the man’s audacity. What did the man think he was doing? Kissing wasn’t fucking. Kissing was something far more intimate. Something far more than Rick was willing to give. Kissing was too far, and nothing that the man deserved.

Negan’s own eyes widened in surprise and shock, likely at himself, but also at Rick as the spell between them broke in that moment. Quickly replacing that shock and self-reproach was a bitter anger, this emotion directed squarely at Rick.

“Not a cuddler? Excuse the fuck out of me. How about you get the fuck out of my bed then if we're done.”

His words were cutting, but his face was in a fucking pout and it had Rick staring just a second more in outright disbelief at the man’s absurdity.

Negan gestured for him to get a move on. “Come on, get. Before you leak my jizz out all over my sheets. We’re done. We’ve fucked. You can go.”

Rick’s hand shot out, wrapping firmly around the other man’s wrist, bordering on painful as he forced the man to meet his gaze. He needed to hear it first. “You’ll leave my people here with me. That was the deal in all of this. Say it… please.”  

Negan scoffed and gave his head a little shake in disbelief. “Saint Rick, the patron saint of takin’ one for the team.”

“Negan-

“Temporarily.”

“W-what?”

Negan sucked on his tongue for a moment, watching Rick squirm uncertainly under his gaze. “You’ll get to keep them temporarily. Turns out you’re a damn good dicking, so I’ll let you have them another week. Maybe we can rehash this deal again then?” he insinuated with a salacious grin.

The relief that flooded Rick was so instantaneous he thought he might pass out or float away, head dropping as he gave a thanks to whatever god out there had spared him this once. A week was all they needed, and then he would have a whole new deal for Negan. Negan could think anything he wanted about this exchange of theirs. Next week the deal would be to surrender or be killed. Him and all his people. All his so called Saviors.

Realizing he hadn’t answered him, Rick gave a weak nod of his head, not even really remembering the questions he had been asked.

“Are you going to get off my bed or have you already started leaking on it?”

The crude voice of the man he most loathed snapped through his relief and Rick dared to scowl at him out of the corner of his eye. He made it a point to slide his ass across the silk before standing up from the bed. A wet trail was left behind him and Negan’s face might have made him laugh in different circumstances.

Rick took the little satisfaction he could get from it and tucked it away deep inside for later as he headed towards the door of the master bath. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

Negan’s hand shot out and gripped his arm, pulling him up short. The amusement was gone from his face once more, his bitterness from the rejection moments ago still clearly visible just under the surface. “What do you say to me, Rick? I just gave you what you wanted. Everything you wanted. Not just your people. Scrub yourself in there all you want, but you’ll never clean that truth off of you. What do you say to me?”

Rick knew what the man wanted, what he was expecting. His throat immediately tightened up with the words that Negan was beseeching out of him. _This last time_ , he told himself. _This final time_.

The words still sat on his tongue like lead. “Thank you.”

X

After getting his pants and shirt back on, Negan could only stand staring at the closed and -likely- locked door of the master bath as Rick took his shower. He watched with a sour turn to his lip as if he could see right through it, seeing Rick scrubbing viciously at his skin till all evidence of Negan upon him was removed. As if it erased what had happened just now. It would never be erased. It would never be forgotten. Negan didn’t want to forget it, and he would make sure Rick never did either.

Every time Rick would meet his eyes he would be reminded of it. Every time he would see Negan’s knowing grin he would remember.

That only made the futileness of what Rick was doing now so much more aggravating to him. A part of him wanted to break the door in, just to prove to Rick how stupid and useless it was to lock it at all; as if Negan wasn’t allowed to go anywhere he damn well wanted.

Before he could give the thought any real consideration, however, the sound of a new voice calling up from the entryway of the house caused him to jump moderately in surprise, caught off guard. “Rick?” the voice called again.

He knew that voice. The samurai chick hadn’t even knocked. But then, why would she? This was technically her home too. She hadn’t stepped a toe in it since that first day Negan had arrived, but she had come here now, of all times. Back from her run, no doubt she had seen the state that everyone was in, noticed the absence of Rick from the suffering masses of Alexandria. She must have come looking for him out of well-placed concern.

 _How sweet_ , he thought bitterly.

Negan picked up his coat and boots from the floor and grabbed Lucille from where he had shoved her under the bed before slipping out of the master bedroom. He closed the door behind him on the way out before Rick managed to hear her calling for him. If Rick wanted to be spiteful towards him after what they had just done, then he could be spiteful right back. It was a game he was better at playing, after all.

He met the woman on her way up the stairs, no doubt in search of her partner in crime. Her intelligent brown eyes immediately snapped up to him, her steps slowing to a stop mid-step as she took in the blood on his shirt. A look of horrid panic pierced through her gaze for just a moment before she started taking in more of the little details. His boots and coat carried in his hands, hair messed, and looking well at ease with the situation.

Negan laid it on thick as he started down the stairs towards her, whistling pleasantly to himself and adding a little extra swagger into his gait. He let a self-satisfied and cheeky grin break across his face as he paused on the steps next to her, watching her eyes as the scratch and bitemarks showing around the corners of his shirt and down his arm pulled her attention. The evidence of violence was juxtaposed to his bushy-tailed stance and he knew she got the message loud and clear. _I just fucked your man._

He resisted the urge to go so far as to grab himself to further illustrate the point as he let the last note of the tune he was whistling trail off low between them. “Bless your timing, Darlin’. Any sooner home you would have been in for a hell of a sight more than I know I am right now.”

Michonne's eyes were understanding, any emotions going on in her were tightly restrained, however, as she stared down the bigger man on the step above her. Show no weakness, Negan could admire that. She was a tough SOB he would give her that any day of the week. Too bad, if she wasn’t drinking the koolaid of Rick so deeply she could have been of use to him. Gal like her could have become one of his generals in no time.

Her voice was as restrained as the rest of her as she managed to find words enough to speak. “Where is Rick?”

Negan feigned surprise at the question. “Hmm? Oh, Rick... he’s taking a shower, getting himself cleaned up. He worked hard for his people today,” Negan chuckled darkly. “So hard, in fact, that you’re gonna get to keep your little rat-pack together for at least another week. I’m reasonable like that, and Rick is a very _hard_ negotiator,” he grinned sardonically. “Damn near had me by the nuts the whole time he was makin’ a deal for them.”

Michonne saw past his crude meanings, unamused and refusing to let her stony demeanor give an inch, though something about her gaze sharpened just a little towards him.

Negan gave the knife a final twist, more for Rick’s sake than for hers, still miffed at him for the slights he had given Negan after getting his word that the people of Alexandria would be spared. He leaned in just a little to drop his voice as if they were sharing secrets. “Truth be told, that is a man who goes above and beyond the call of duty. I see why you keep him around.”

Michonne’s eyes snapped up to his then, and her tongue was cutting and clipped at last when she spoke, “Obviously there are no depths he would not sink to for the sake of those he loves,” she retorted, eyes drifting down Negan reproachfully so he clearly understood that he was the ‘depths’ she was referring to. “We all know that, and that is why everyone who follows him will always do so. Someone like you wouldn’t understand.”

Negan’s grin twisted down into a bitter scowl at her biting remark. She could be as insulting as Rick, it seemed.

Fuck it then. He made it a point of adjusting his dick in his pants before padding his way casually down the steps. “You ever get tired of him, send him my way,” he gave as a parting shot.

Fuck them both- again, in Rick’s case.

He made his way out of the house and glanced around at the still distraught and worried Alexandrians who hadn’t yet been told they’d been given a temporary pardon. He shook his head and mused to himself that he was too damn nice to them all as he went off to find Dwight and let him know tomorrow plans would be changing.

X

“Rick?”

His head snapped up from the towel he had just wrapped around his hips after his shower at the sound of Michonne’s soft voice calling through the bathroom door. The worry that Negan was still out there with her had him hurrying over to the door and opening it up for her. There was no Negan in sight. Just the rumpled and ruined bed sheets and his own ripped up clothes scattered about the floor, and a deeply concerned Michonne looking him over.

Her brown eyes took in and cataloged every bruise, and he knew there were a lot of them, all spelling out his sins to her.

“My god,” she breathed out, sounding appalled enough that Rick hung his head in shame. “What the hell did he do to you?”

Rick realized her tone was not directed at him. “I did plenty to him too,” he admitted. “He- he said our people can stay with us for another week.” More abashedly, he murmured out a small, “I’m sorry.”

He did mean it. Truly.

He had found a way to want the man he detested most in this world, but now back in his right mind, the monster sated and tucked safely away once more, he was sorry that it had happened, necessary though it had been. If there had been another way he would have taken it.

Michonne’s hands on him were soft, so soft and so caring and he let them cup his face gingerly to pull him down so their foreheads could touch. “We do what we have to do,” Michonne repeated to him, her voice shaking slightly with what sounded like sorrow for the sacrifice he had made, the place he had force himself to go to. Negan saw the monster in him, but Michonne could always see the man so much more clearly inside of him, and right now she knew that that part of him was hurting for what he had had to do. “We are the ones that survive. Because of what you’ve done… now we can. And we will.”

Rick placed a soft kiss against her lips. Sealing the deal. "We will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desire, by Meg Myers is the perfect accompaniment to this chapter; first verse Negan's and the second verse Rick's. Hope you enjoyed and please let me know either way any thoughts you have in the comments.


	9. Chapter 9

 

Rick stayed at Aaron’s house that night. If Negan trashed his on that final night then he would bear with it. He dressed in fresh clothes after Michonne took full stock of his bruised flesh, but there was little more to be done for it. Nothing broken, nothing cut open to risk infection. Rick had gotten off easier than Negan had in that department.

Where ever the man had gone to lick his wounds, Rick hadn’t known nor cared. He didn’t even know or care if Negan actually returned to the house that night.

Cradled in Michonne’s rejuvenating arms, he hadn’t cared either. She was the angel to Negan’s demon, and soothed Rick’s tattered human soul regardless whether he deserved the redemption or not.

That was why he had given up the couch that she had forced upon him at the beginning of the night to join her on the floor right in front of it just after she had drifted off to sleep. Too tired to fight with him to take the couch once more, she had embraced him without hesitation and gone back to sleep. That night, more than any other, Rick found even the finest bed severely lacking compared to the comfort of the floor.

Their sorely needed repose was painfully interrupted the next morning by the sound of large trucks sounding off a chorus of horns, announcing the new dawn and summoning Alexandria from the shelter of their homes to see what the commotion was about.

Aaron still had that mad desperate look in his eye as he bid Eric to stay near the house, going with Rick and Michonne down the street just a little ways to the gathered convoy of Savior trucks already filled with the Savior’s gear that they had brought with them and now sat idling.  

The people of Alexandria were anxious, still unknowing of their granted reprieve. Rick and Michonne hadn’t said anything to anyone just in case any issue should arise in Negan keeping his word today. The truck at the front of the convoy opened its door wide and Negan stepped down from inside of it, bright eyed and bushy-tailed… and patched up from the look of the bandages peaking out of the collar of his coat.

Aside from the busted lip and some swelling around his cheek, there was little evidence to be seen of their tryst. Rick sported a swollen eye of his own, and several bruises, but nothing damning. Not to most anyway. Aaron hadn’t asked him about it the night before, though he and Eric had clearly seen Rick’s new marks. Rick could tell they had assumed it was the result of one of the saviors throwing their weight around, just as they had done to Aaron the week prior. Now, Aaron was seeing Negan and giving Rick a second, weighing glance as the man moved to the forefront of the group that had amassed. Rick refused to tear his eyes from the leader of the Saviors.

Negan’s grin splayed wide across his face, Lucille twirling a bit in his hand for show as if he had to actually work to get any more attention upon himself. His Saviors stood around the trucks, looking confused as to why they hadn’t been told to load the people on the trucks along with their stuff. The only ones that looked bored and ready to go were Negan’s generals, likely they already knew the deal had been changed. Rick wondered with a thin dread if they knew _why_. His stomach tightened as he waited for Negan to drop the ball on everyone and tell them about their reprieve and maybe even exactly how they had gotten it.

Rick could barely swallow, his throat and mouth so dry as Negan’s hazel eyes caught his through the throng of people and that smile darkened considerably, saying ‘We fucked, and we both know it’.

Now who else would know it?

All of them? Rick almost saw it happening, Negan pointing him out in the crowd, announcing the way that Rick had approached him, torn into him for the sake of his people… for the sake of feeding the beast inside of him. Telling them now he had let the man oppressing them all cum deep between his cheeks. See the horrified, disgusted faces turn to him before that disgust turned to scorn and they turned their backs to him once and for all.

Negan’s voice was like a loud-speaker directly into his ear when the man did speak at last. “Listen up, Shit-lickers. You’re all gonna wanna pay close attention to this.”

Rick felt the sweat trickle down his back. Michonne stood firm next to him.

Alexandria awaited its fate.

Negan cleared his throat dramatically before continuing. “I know some of you are expecting to come home with us… and you will… but not at this time.”

A wave washed through the crowd of Alexandria, a wave of something that wasn’t daring enough to be relief just yet, but a sliver of anxious hope and confusion, an underlying current of dread for what worse fate was about to befall them.

“Give yourselves a round of applause. You earned this,” Negan insisted earnestly. “You all had a good fuckin’ week. Something that is fuckin’ rare out of this group. No one dead. No one trying anything stupid. Shit, I asked for no complaints this week and you all kept the peace for once. Nice vacation for us all. So like I said- round of applause for yourselves.” Negan’s easy tone and wide smile curled into a quick snarl when no one dared to move. “Do it,” he snarled at the closest person to him in the group of Alexandrians, making a clapping motion towards the singled out member as if to demonstrate how.

The man he had growled at flinched, but gave the saddest and most hesitant clap ever heard, and that sad sound echoed as a few others in the crowd followed along uncertainly.

Negan’s demeanor kicked back up right away as if it were a resounding chorus of hoorah. “Yessir, this is a great fuckin’ week for y’all. You got rest, relaxation, a mark-down on your tributes, and a decent haul of fatty junk food that you get to keep all to yourselves.”

Negan ran a tongue across his teeth thoughtfully. “Now we all know… I can be a little bit of a hard ass. And we all know that Rick,” he bit out the name like a crack of static in the air and Rick felt his hair stand on end anxiously, “Can be a tight ass. A _real_ tight ass.”

Rick’s fists clenched till his nails cut into his own skin, but he stood strong as he glared back at the man hatefully.

Negan held that glare, his eyes maliciously gleeful. “There’s really something to be said for positive reinforcement, however. So when Rick came to me and asked me to reward you all with a showing of good faith that I could leave you all together here to try to have another good week- being the reasonable guy that I am- I said ‘why the fuck not?’ Winning bet- let it ride.” That tone turned serious once more, the jovial uptick flattening out. “For now.”

There was a staggering silence as it dawned upon them all just how temporary and frail this reprieve was.

“For as long as we keep all coming out ahead on this, we can see how this goes. Let it ride. Whether this pays off or not depends on the lot of you doing what you need to be doing.” Those eyes locked with Rick’s then and there was a pointed warning there. “Don’t waste this chance by doin’ nothin’ stupid now.”

There was a heavy tension hanging over the crowd, sharing in that warning. They all were left winded by this mercy that had befallen them in the midst of a serious loosing streak, and all shared the silent knowledge of what it meant. They could proceed with the rebellion. Now they had more reason than ever, knowing how close they were to losing each other. Just how easily that could still happen.

Rick’s resolve was firm as he held Negan’s heavy stare.

Negan snorted a laugh like he found Rick simply amusing, casting him a wink right in front of everyone that had Rick’s face growing hot with anger more so than embarrassment, though there was that too. “See you next week, Rick.”

Without any further farewell for any of the rest of them, Negan climbed up into the truck once more, giving the side a slap before the engine roared to life and Gavin punched it into gear, moving out.

X

Negan could feel the eyes of Alexandria upon the trucks the whole way down the road toward the gate. He glanced in the rear-view window, reaching out and adjusting it till he found Rick in its sights. Even at the distance he could make out the man’s scowl.

 _Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear_ , was framed under his reflection.

Negan chuckled to himself and slapped the mirror image of Rick.

Gavin licked his lips next to him in contemplation. Negan wondered if maybe the guy had started picking that habit up from him. “So, we didn’t really get much out of this week, and now the one thing we came to get we’re leaving without?”

Negan chuckled humorously. “The one thing we came to get? Hell, we got the one thing we came here to get. Everything else we can take whenever we want it. Those homes and people and all their shit is already ours. It’s just a matter of coming to collect.”

Gavin frowned in confusion. “So what did we collect this time? We left all that there.”

Negan rolled his eyes at his general’s lack of insight. “Knowledge. We collected knowledge. We know their people now. All of them. We know whose weak, and whose strong. Whose going to be the biggest turds stuck in our asses. We know the entire layouts of their little rat-cage. Arat and Gary were kind enough to even map it out for us after hours. Most importantly, we know they’re up to something, they always are. But we know they don’t have guns. They don’t have numbers. They don’t have shit to make any kind of play right now, and that is something worth knowing rather than guessing.”

Gavin seemed to mull that over for a moment, before nodding his head along in agreement. “Okay, but if we’re gonna spend a week at the kingdom next just know that I’m not calling anyone ‘me lord’.”

Negan let out a snort of laughter. Shit no.

As the gates of Alexandria closed behind them and the trucks rumbled down the road, Negan found himself going back over the week in his mind, at first looking for anything that had been overlooked, but that turned to just going over his time with Rick.

That turned even more quickly towards the night before, and Negan fingered at the edge of the bandage peaking up from his collar rather fondly. It had been a week well-spent indeed, and he would carry the memory even closer than he would carry the scars from it. Rick had been just as he thought he would be once he let himself go. He had been beautiful. Teeth and claws and rage and unbridled desire. He had been wild.

And for just a shining moment, he had been Negan’s.

The walkie fastened to the dash crackled between them, Gavin picking it up. “Go for Gavin.”

“This is Simon, lookin’ for Boss Man,” came the staticy reply, “Any idea where he is?”

“Got him here with me,” Gavin radioed back.

Negan listened, but didn’t turn to look towards him, nor try to take the walkie.

Simon’s voice crackled through again and Negan could tell just from the amount of static that he was at the northern outpost. The others came in clearer. He paid attention to little things like that. “I got someone here with me that wants to talk to him… and I got a feelin’ he’s definitely going to want to hear them out.”

There was something in Simon’s voice over the radio that caught Negan’s interest even more than the cryptic message. He sounded excited, and nothing put excitement in Simon’s voice like that more than knowing someone was about to get it for some fuck up or another. He turned and took the walkie from Gavin so he could focus on driving. “Negan here.”

It was a moment before the walkie cracked back on. This time it wasn’t Simon’s voice on the other end. It was firm, but feminine. The speech inflections and lack of grammar told Negan right away who it was before they could even introduce themselves. “We talk. Face to face. Much to discuss. Have deals to make with Saviors.”

“Jadis… been a while.” Negan knew of the little scavenger group. They were off-putting enough to leave be for the most part. There was little they had that he wanted, and what he wanted he didn’t want bad enough to put up with the fucking smell to get to. Taking their guns would have been nice, but they weren’t about to just hand them over, and he wasn’t willing to risk his people so long as those guns were never turned towards them. It was an unspoken truce that they respected each other’s territories. Being that their territory was a landfill, Negan was willing to do so. For her to go to Simon’s outpost and demand to speak to him… something was up. “What exactly do you think we need to discuss?”

The radio gave a long crackle before her voice broke through once more. Her answer took him completely by surprise, but left him very willing to go hear her out. “Rick Grimes.”

X

Rick didn’t feel relieved. Even when the trucks were gone and the gate closed behind them. There was a collective relief that washed through his people that didn’t even touch him.

They were still together, and that was a lot to be grateful for, but it wasn’t everything. There was still the issue of delivering on his agreement with Jadis, and now they only had a week to do that. The sole blessing of the Saviors waking them all up and taking off so early in the day was that it meant Rick and Michonne could go out and get started looking yet still.

He tensely helped load up the vehicle they would be taking. They would be going out far, just the two of them like they had talked about doing.

Rick was anxious as he bid farewell to those that counted on him to deliver. His kids would remain with Aaron and Eric, whom were almost too busy holding each other to be able to give Rick a proper goodbye. He left them to it happily, seeing them clinging to each other easing some of the lingering distress of what he had put himself through.

Michonne met him at the gate, loading the last of her bags into the back before climbing behind the wheel, insisting she would drive for the first part of the trip. Rick was willing to lose that fight, wearily slipping into the passenger side.

“Hey,” Michonne nudged him softly, not yet turning on the engine. “You ready?”

There was a small assuring smile playing around her lips, and Rick recalled the last time they had been at this gate and she had asked him that. Then they had been on the other side, ready to make the choice to journey into the unknown for the chance to live rather than just get by. Now they were facing that choice again now, and that same question and that same reassuring smile from her was the lifeline he needed. Rick reached over and took her hand, squeezing it hard.

He took a shuddering breath, let it go slowly, and felt relief at last. “Yeah.”

Michonne’s smile widened a little bit. “You almost are anyway. Hang on a moment…”

Rick cocked a brow questioningly as she dug into the little carrying bag sitting between them on the center console.

“I told you at the beginning of the week I had stashed something back for you. In case you needed a pick-me-up at the end. Well, here you go.”

She handed over whatever she had fished out, hidden in her fist till it was in Rick’s hand. Rick looked down at the little plastic badge she handed him. It was one of the ones kids played with, usually costing less than a buck and put into party bags. A little western star painted gold- dingy like it had been sitting in the dirt when it had been found. The words ‘Deputy Sheriff’ staring up at him.

Michonne grinned at him as Rick’s mouth pulled into a smile despite himself, touching the toy as if it were something precious. It was now anyway. A little reminder of the man he was before. The morals he fought for. The humanity within him.

There was still plenty of that left in him even if there was also a monster inside, buried underneath it all. He supposed he could live with that, live with his monster. After all, both his humanity and his monster were the reasons he was still alive to fight today. They were the reason many that he loved still were there to stand by his side.

Yes, he would live with that. And they would all go on living right along with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end  
> This story leads right up into episode "Say Yes" S7 Ep12.  
> \---but I did give Alexandria a non-cannon compliant cow and calf---  
> please leave Kudos -even if you don't have an account- and review. Thank you!

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me for updates and general creative trash on tumblr @Irishgrlnextdoor.  
> Find me on instagram @ rnfloyd_official to check out my original published fantasy work, The Book of Lo, by R. N. Floyd 
> 
> Thank you for your interest, please leave a kudos and review!


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